Flight (2006)
7mins 43 sec

Dryden Goodwin’s Flight, is an installation of inter-related elements including a film combining live action, animated intervention and a multi-layered soundtrack, presented alongside hundreds of small-scale pen and ink drawings, which construct and constitute the animation.

Flight places the viewer at the centre of the action through the eyes of the artist fugitive embarked on an emotional and ambiguous escape journey. The film tracks the protagonist’s movement out from urban vistas, via motorway networks, through forests to the coast, onwards to the sea and sky.  Evoking the fear of pursuit and a restless inability to settle and relate to people, place and self alongside the hope of liberation. The transformative quality of the animated interventions suggests a superimposed fantasy or reverie.

Goodwin is interested in viewing the film and drawings in close proximity, exploring the potential for one to influence and heighten the viewer’s experience of the other. Built into the structure of the film are rhythmic tensions between accelerated forward motion and serene stillness. This allows a context for static and moving images to interact by exploring a journey and the formation of memory. The dislocating nature of the film is complimented by intensely realised drawings that are placed within illuminated display cases. Ranging from minimal marks to elaborate structures, the drawings repeatedly revisit moments from the journey and amass captured thoughts and emotions. The multi-layered sound recording, comprising of orchestration, natural sounds and voices, accentuates and interprets the details presented in the work.

Goodwin’s pen and ink drawings and animated interventions offer the viewer diverse gestures as potential keys to psychological states, suggesting an evolving relationship between the unknown protagonist and the changing surroundings.

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