TONY LAWRENCE

Fragments of a Horse

2012, 2 min 16 sec

From a 16mm found footage film. An overexposed and faded piece of the 1950s. A rider and horse are blown out by light as though this past can only to be grasped in hazy fragments.

Takes imagery of the past in Fragments of a Horse and imbricates it into the collective cultural memory. A ghostly palette, roving slow motion 1950’s imagery and eerie electronic soundtrack observed in Fragments of a Horse heighten the nostalgia innate in the appropriated found footage of 16mm home movies. Taking the horse motifs from BENSON’s He Looks Just Like His Mother as a starting point, this work has been selected to advance the viewer’s psychological journey through Australian selfhood, mining our past and probing the liquescent internal spaces of memory and imagination. Like Benson, LAWRENCE’s surreal work sits at the threshold between private imagery, probing the nexus of past and present and dealing with timeless human expression.

Tony is a film artist based in Sydney, Australia.
For a decade he has been creating a vast film archive of more than four hundred 8mm, 9.5mm and 16mm home movies, news reels and stock footage. From these he creates new works. Predetermined themes or ideas informed by the images are edited together. He then creates an original soundtrack utilizing antique synthesisers and piano.
Experimental transfer techniques and the affects of age and decay on these films are used to convey different moods.
His films have played at many art galleries and film festivals including The Perth Revelation Film Festival curated by Jack Sargeant and the Brisbane, Chicago, Dublin, Arizona and London Underground Film Festivals. Winning awards at Indie Fest, Wimbledon film festival and the United States Super 8 Festival.
His film ‘Girl on Fire’ won Recycled Cinema and Audience Choice awards at Sydney Underground Film Festival where he also won the Material Affects award for his film ‘Aloha Hawaii’.
Two of his films are part of Striking Contrasts; a screening program curated by Geoffrey Weary in association with dLux Media Arts, “The digital film works produced by these artists are characterised by pushing the boundaries of what we might understand to be a 'documentary' or 'narrative' film, working with existing or 'found' footage to rework into something completely new".
Also for five years Tony produced and presented ‘Sydney Shorts’ a weekly underground short film program for TVS - community TV Sydney, which he filmed in his lounge room.