Spotlight on Intersections@5: Nicholas and Sheila Pye

The Phillips celebrates the fifth anniversary of its Intersections contemporary art series with Intersections@5, an exhibition comprising work by 20 of the participating artists. In this blog series, each artist writes about his or her work on view.

Pye_coronation

Nicholas Pye and Sheila Pye, The Coronation, 2008. Single channel video with sound. Gift of the artists and Andrea Pollan

The Coronation is an installation project incorporating a blend of experimental and narrative techniques to shape a cinematic perspective that employs visual language commonly used in painting. The installation is composed of three parts, with all three cinematic ‘panels’ playing simultaneously. The concept for the installation was inspired by altarpiece triptychs from the Renaissance and Medieval periods in art history. Our aim was to create a modern allegorical interpretation of the triptych using video and sound. The center component became a conceptual performance based work on a loop, and projected in the portrait format.  The centerpiece is flanked on either side by two life sized figures of a man and a woman also projected in portrait format.  This work is not a narrative in the typical sense, but rather a series of constructed tableaus existing in a theatrical world.

Nicholas and Sheila Pye