Miles Joseph, The Image is Blurry Sometimes

Opening Night: 23 June, 6-9pm

Open: 24 + 25 June, 12-6pm

“Everything went a bit wrong with my mental health in 2017. Changing medications nearly broke me and three years later I was recovering, building to getting going again and ready to put on a show for a residency with OUTPOST. 

Then the world melted, that was March 2020. I call it my pandemically challenged residency and here I am again - take two.

Even before all of that, this video work was important to me. It’s deeply personal and autobiographical in its subject, and, formally it is a culmination of everything I have worked towards. It feels like a natural end point for what has come before. In terms of subject, it is a personal study of my own experiences of living with bipolar and, in form, the project is made up of multiple works with each covering a different aspect of my story with each constructed and edited to reflect its subject, forming a collage of ideas and techniques that merge together into a formally experimental work. 

An informative and heartfelt, multi-facetted video essay exploring bipolar. What you see here is not an end point for this work but a starting point, it is a living piece of work that’s destined to be expanded, reformatted and re-presented in multiple forms like live edited performance and interactive non-linear film installation.

My practice is about the relationship between sound and image – usually separately sourced, creating new meanings and new associations through abstracted third meanings. Montage is not just about image placement for me, it is the placement and arrangement of everything. This idea of montage is key throughout - between sound and image, between image and image, and crucially between each of the individual works as they form together. How one part of the story flows into the next. I exist somewhere between fine art and film, neither wholly an artist nor a filmmaker, I have to fall in to that ill-defined category, the artist filmmaker. I am drawn to the experimental side but I do feel there should be some form of graspable narrative, however challenging it is in its presentation.

I graduated from NUA in 2010 having studied Film and Video. I spent some time building foundations and learning new skills, before returning to education in 2016 to study Fine Art Practice, Photography and Moving Image at Masters level within Glasgow School of Art. 

I have laid so many foundations for this project over the last decade, cultivating my practice. This residency and exhibition has allowed me to focus on the building blocks I have ready to play with. The subject matter, my mental struggles, and this works pandemically challenged stagnation are all intertwined here.

My influences include David Lynch, Peter Tscherkassky, Chris Marker, Susan Hiller, Peter Watkins, John Smith, Thomas Ruff, Charlotte Prodger, and Oskar Fischinger.”

Image Credit: Miles Joseph