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Depict
August September 2000

Six shows recommended

David Brittain

Another talented young artist working with cameras and digital technology is Dryden Goodwin (Stephen Friedman Gallery, 25-28 Old Burlington Street, London from 15 September) whose recent video installation Wait, was premiered at the Tate Gallery Liverpool, earlier this year. Goodwin videos ordinary people performing unremarkable feats - a woman waving, a man greeting, a man descending an escalator - then slows, loops and replays these vignettes revealing an astonishing beauty, which resides in the everyday. Shot during the months prior to the end of the millennium, Wait contains images of anticipation - of a football fan waiting for his team to score, of a groom waiting to say "I do", etc. Here the incidental gesture becomes charged with prescience, life seems ritualised and operatic. Like Macmillian, Goodwin aims to make us aware of the totally subjective nature of the experience of time. The sensation and fascination gained from the work of Goodwin are not unconnected to the experience of looking at a person who is unaware of our gaze. This realisation connects the viewer of these images with these subjects and could explain why the critic Catherine Elwes has called Goodwin a "compassionate" artist.

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