"i know..i know..i know it is indeed time for lunch" (12 mins. looped, colour, sound, 5 projections/monitors, 5 DVDs synched.) The 10 interwoven audio tracks of this video piece portray the mind of the solitary creative being.
Christopher Steadman works in photographic and video installations.
Born in a village in England, Steadman moved to the U.S.A. at age 13. He worked and studied in NYC and London, receiving a Masters in Photography from NYU/ICP and a Master in Fine Arts from Central St. Martins for which he received a British Academy Arts and Humanities Research Bursary.
Steadman's work has been shown internationally in New York, London, Paris, Berlin among other cities in Europe and the U.S.A. He has won many awards and grants for his art practice, and spent 5 years between 2003-2008 moving nomadically between international artist's residencies.
Most of his earlier work was exhibited as multi-monitor installations featuring the artist performing in a variety of archetypal roles. These clever installations addressed issues of sexuality, patriarchy and machismo in a powerful and disturbing way.
Steadman used in-camera editing techniques, shooting the entire projects locked into his studio alone with one camera over a 48 hour period. All these earlier works covered themes ranging from masculinity in crisis to domestic obsession and oppression, and were presented synchronized on three adjacent monitors. One of the most impressive elements of this earlier work was how he used everyday sounds, familiar images and repetitive mundane activity to make his visual articulation both subtle and poignant. This work engaged you in a manner which is almost involuntary, and often returns to unsettle you hours later like the slightly delayed emotions of a half-forgotten dream.
He continues to create and develop multi-monitor installations, expanding the number of monitors used and the technical complexity of his medium, but still uses only one camera to shoot each project. His work has matured, both in texture and voice. He stopped using himself as subject, and found a fresh vision by distancing artist from art, which alternatively coerces all that is around him to speak in his place. His recent installations come across as more polished, and yet manage to maintain the excitement and innovation of something raw, homemade, and deeply personal.
“Steadman seems to possess one of those rare spirits that serves to remind those around him that there are few pursuits more noble or more fundamental to the affirmation of our human worth than to make art.” (2011)
