Boyd Webb: Horse & Dog

Exhibitions

9 November - 1 December 2002

Horse & Dog is the latest in a series of films by the internationally acclaimed artist, filmmaker and photographer, Boyd Webb. Distinctively offbeat, droll and engaging, Horse & Dog revels in the kind of elegantly observed absurdities that have long been a feature of Webb’s photographic works.

The film’s action revolves around a horse and dog and their ill-fated camping expedition to the country. Over the course of their holiday weekend, the two animals suffer the discomfort and indignities usually associated with camping; they struggle to pitch a tent, are accosted by insects, squabble and bicker about their sleeping arrangements and finally return home early.

Combining knockabout physicality with the artist’s trademark visual invention and sly, sardonic humour, this cameo of man’s best friends offers a vivid reminder of the eccentricities of human behaviour.

Horse & Dog has been filmed on location in Sussex with a professional cast and crew and the finished work will be projected in the Cube and Middle Galleries. It has been commissioned by the Estorick Collection, Film and Video Umbrella and The Laboratory at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, University of Oxford in association with the De La Warr Pavilion and Milton Keynes Gallery.

Examples of Boyd Webb’s photographic work from the 1970s will be shown in the Middle Gallery. Taking the absurdities of human behaviour as his starting point, Boyd Webb created at the beginning of his career a series of “staged photo-events” which show a quirky world view and off-beat sense of humour very like that of Horse & Dog.