Oliver Payne and Nick Relph

Located at the crossroads of social documentary, video clip, and visual diary, Oliver Payne and Nick Relph's videos are the expression of an urban sensibility that combines social radicalism, the pursuit of pleasure and beauty, and a fondness for cultural paradoxes. In just a few years, the London-based duo has developed an engaged view of contemporary culture that combines raw, immediate excitement with a complex social and political awareness. Driftwood is the first segment of a trilogy, and, according to the artists, the film is "about exploring secret London and getting lost in your own city." Payne and Relph are straightforward about their antagonism for corporate intervention into youth culture, an attitude that comes through in the dialogue and pace of their gritty travelogue. Driftwood will be shown with Comma, Pregnant Pause, a new work commissioned by the 2004–5 Carnegie International. Departing from their earlier works, Comma incorporates animation along with new and found footage.

Selected Bibliography:

Electric Earth: Film and Video from Britain. Exhibition catalogue. London: British Council, 2003.

Higgs, Matthew. "First Take." Artforum 39, no. 5 (January 2001): 125.

–––. "Oliver Payne and Nick Relph." In Fig. 1. Exhibition catalogue. London: Whitechapel Art Gallery, 2001.

Suburban: Oliver Payne and Nick Relph. Exhibition catalogue. Knoxville, Tenn.: Knoxville Museum of Art, 2003.

Wilson, Michael. "A Thousand Words: Oliver Payne and Nick Relph Talk about Mixtape, 2002" Artforum 41, no. 1 (September 2002): 178–79.

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