Stephen Sutcliffe

In the lecture I realised that Stephan spoke more about his inspirations, thought processes and other people then he did talk about his own work, but this makes sense for his practice. Sutcliffe explained how growing up television and media/pop culture are a huge aspect in his relationship and understanding of art.

Throughout the lecture Stephen when describing his work, he would explain the specific reasons and influences leading to works. For instance, for Stephan’s piece ‘AB…’ where he took an interview of Anthony Burgess and edited the video to be in alphabetical order. I thought this piece was so clever and witty its hilarious and before showing the video, Stephen spoke about how he tried to read this book ‘Alphabetical Africa’ by Walter Abish, which was placed in the top 10 of the hardest to finish books. Stephan edited the interview to be in the same style as the writing of the book.

There was a similar kind of book Stephen spoke about being another huge inspiration for his work was ‘I remember’ by Joe Brainard, whose work has been described as a ‘cult classic’ even Brainard himself wrote in a letter to his friend ‘I feel very much like God writing the Bible’ when talking about ‘I remember’. The book speaks of simple reminiscences about growing up in Oklahoman around the 1950’s but each line starts with I remember which can be seen in the image to the right. 

Although I weren’t too big of a fan of Stephan’s works/practice I did like the humorous aspect of his work, the use of his witty humour in his work did work well. Such as ‘Scenes from the life of an impatient man’ where Stephan created a video collage to accompany the poet Christopher Logue, using images from a newspaper of someone trying to put themselves into a duffel bag which was a test used in a police investigation for murder case.