At Betty’s House
A flythough animation made from still images of interiors of stately homes, and the Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House. Made as a continuous loop, so a viewer remains inside the space. It can be viewed from any point in the loop.

Rooms lead on from and to other implausible spaces. Objects appear and disappear, we change scale in relation to the objects as we move through them and the rooms and all the while we are accompanied by the sound of our own footsteps. There are other sounds that punctuate the space, implying that we are not the only occupants in this house.
This piece refers to the interior spaces of computer games and their first person point of view. Made initially as a response to theoretical reading around what is currently being called neo-baroque, it soon became clear that this piece was in fact a response to memories of visiting Betty Pinny.

short extract from Alwyn Park House
2011, large digital projection, 6 mins 22 secs looping with sound
to see entire film, please contact the artist

Installation at the Regency Town House, Brighton, 2011

This film also has accompanying prints made as three dimensional objects, various aspects of the image occupying different planes within each frame.

frame from 54 Morning Lane: the sitting room at night

2010, small monitor installation, each 1 min 30 secs (approx) looping with sound

go to animate projects to watch animation: click here

go to essay by Jonathan Burt: click here

go to video interview with Suky Best: click here

Four scenes each just over a minute long showing a collage of filmed owls placed on top of a scene from a British film of the 1940’s (This Happy Breed 1941). In each scene owls appear and disappear. The work comes from ideas of transgressive animals within children’s fiction, especially Beatrix Potter’s, A Tale of Two Bad Mice, 1902 where two mice enter a dolls house, and, finding all the food to be fake, smash it up in anger and disappointment
The room, a film set, is used as a constructed fictional space, like a dolls house but for adults. The collage is deliberately crude to allow a space for the viewer to fill in the gaps and make the scene more real; what they are watching isn’t real.

54 Morning Lane (2010)

These are the birds that live in the house. An ordinary house where you, or I, could be live. When no one is looking they appear, becoming visible in the empty spaces; when your back is turned.

These are the real inhabitants.

They have always been there.

There since the space was enclosed by bricks; displaced from their trees, resentful.

Living in the walls, the cracks between, having a life amongst us. In moments of despair they can become visible to us, but we don’t notice.

When the house is empty they come out to play.

When our backs are turned they help themselves.

Camouflaging themselves against wallpaper, merging with the patterns, in control of their opacity.

And

Always angry, they change the space just by being there.

Eating cake, biting at the backs of chairs ill tempered and bad mannered.

If you don’t believe me, perhaps you just haven’t looked hard enough.

A 4:3 ratio animation turned through 90º to be projected on a wall.
This work is about flight and as such the verticality of the content needs to be emphasised by the form of the work. The work begins and ends on black, this is so it can loop repeatedly. The looping gives the work greater presence; it’s more of an extended picture than an animation. It has a structure but no story.
It plays over and over. A fragment of film, alluding to something much longer, the whole life of a bird spent inside a box at the behest of the scientists observing it. Although the bird is small it takes up the entire area, and can move in any direction.
Nothing else can or will use this enclosure

This piece was commissioned by artisancam, the process of its construction can be seen on the artisancam website: view here

installation view of An Observation of Flight at London Metropolitan University 2011

still from The Flowers of the Mansion

view The Flowers of the Mansion here

commissioned by Tatton park biennial for the website.

The Flowers of the Mansion
has been made from images of the interior of the mansion at Tatton Park, vintage postcards of the park, images from the Tatton archive and live footage and sounds.

The room Mrs Waugh and Lady Beatrix Egerton occupy as they await their guests is a collage of domestic objects normally located in different parts of the Mansion. At the centre of the scene is a bowl of fresh roses, the focus of the piece. Through the window the Italian Garden can be seen, bringing live action into the composite of the sitting room.

Two voices bring us into the respective worlds of the house and garden: Marian Littler, the Mansion’s flower arranger, and gardener Peter Lofthouse. Both relate a minor aspect of the daily working of the house. Marian works closely with Peter who brings flowers in for her to arrange. Those working within the mansion appear to exist in a separate sphere to those working outside. The flowers bridge the two worlds.

The interior life of Tatton Park mansion alluded to as The Towers in Mrs Gaskell’s novel Wives & Daughters (1866) is a stifling class bound world of manners and etiquette where men have freedoms and privileges prohibited to women; the animation suggests this difference with the immobility of the interior spaces and the dynamism of the world outside.

3 short repeating animations

Yellow Rodeo 2 minutes 37 seconds looped

Blue Rodeo I minute 47 seconds looped

Red Rodeo 2 minutes 44 seconds looped

Rodeo features the rider of bull or horse in vibrant colour. The animations are red, yellow and blue, primary colours to show a primal sport. The power and emotion of the struggle between man and beast is heightened by the strong bold visuals. Also, in keeping with filmic depictions of rodeo, the animation either takes place in powerful, elegant slow motion or frantic real time. 8 seconds is the amount of time a bull rider must stay on to achieve a score. Each animation is projected and repeats endlessly, the seemingly monotonous actions interspersed by the buzzer marking the beginning and end of a ride.

Rodeo is a fast and intense competition between rider and animal. Bulls compete with their aspiring riders over and over in different venues, with bulls having equal star billing. These characters can be seen as an extension of celebrity culture creating equality between man and animal.

In both the video and printed work only the central characters of rider and bull are depicted all other characters and forms are removed; they define the world around them. The animations are meticulously hand drawn frame by frame then re assembled to make moving video. The riders merge with the animals to briefly become creatures of legend before separating into pools of colour on the ground. The sparse animation style gives little clue as to scale and perspective, at times disorientating the viewer in the visual space.

5 Large Screen prints
150 x100 cms

Rodeo #1

Rodeo #2

Rodeo #3

Rodeo #4

Rodeo #5

installation view print from Rodeo at Danielle Arnaud, London 2008

Higlanes Gallery, Drogheda, Ireland 2009

still image from Early Birds

The film Early Birds can bee seen at animateprojects.org

An accompanying essay by Roy Exley

An interview with Suky Best on the making of early birds

Early Birds at the Natural History Museum

still image from Early Birds

A hand-drawn rotoscoped animation from wildlife footage, showing garden birds in silhouette against flat colour backgrounds that subtly change, signifying the coming of the dawn. Featuring interviews with people talking of their memories and experiences of the dawn chorus contrasted with their experience of it today. The soundtrack also features birdsong from common UK garden birds. The film is intended to make us look anew at a daily occurrence and the wild animals we encounter on a daily basis.
Technical information
Hand drawn frame by frame over existing documentary footage of garden birds. The drawings show only the birds in silhouette, all other detail is removed. Made in Photoshop and assembled in After Effects and Premiere software. The sound was made separately from live recordings, interviews and library recordings of bird song.

A commission for the main reception area of UCLH NHS London. Made from images taken from the archive of the Middlesex, UCH, St Peters, The Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, The Eastman and the National Institute for Neurology hospitals, the hospitals that have now been amalgamated into the new UCLH, to show the history of the institusions. Each image used has been reinterpreted using animation, to change and bring each image to life in a short film. These films, begin and end on black and have been programmed to play in a random manner.

installation image of From The Archive in the main reception area University College Hopsital NHS, London