Matthew McGaughey

(2020) 10’

2-channel 4K video with sound

Drawing on the reality television confessional trope, Reconciliation - in progress explores a rehab family session as a tool to examine the fictional dimensions of memory. A father and son are brought together in order to "speak their truth" about past events. As the session unfolds, the characters act out their parts flatly and unemotionally, rehashing the prescriptive formula encouraged by the psychotherapist. Their voices are out of sync and disembodied. Their eyes reveal that they are reading from a script. As the interaction becomes increasingly traumatic, large holes emerge. The dialog drops out leaving only the music and the characters’ eye movements. Certain brutal scenes from the script are left unperformed exposing the limits of what can be communicated. Memories diverge and the truth of past experience becomes increasingly problematic and conflicted.

(2020) 6’

Single channel 4k video with sound

Taking on themes of entitlement and masculine fragility, Hunting Trip is an absurd scenario in which a bumbling hunter attempts to verbally engage with a plastic bird after being unable to shoot it down. Climbing up a tree, he tries and fails to sweet talk his prey into coming home with him. The flattened characters are re-voiced and slightly out of sync while the almost comical horror score shifts the affective resonance to something both sinister and goofy. The interaction implodes as the hunter breaks down under a shower of bird shit and incessant chirping.

(2018) 11’ 26”

Single channel 2K video with sound

In a small yoga studio, a guru hypnotises a group of 6 adherents while below, workmen dig out the foundation.

(2018) Performance approx. 10’

 A passed-out or dead frat boy is used as an instrument to perform upon a grand piano.