RLVideo: Mariam Ghani and Erin Ellen Kelly: Like Water from a Stone

*This is an online event.

RYAN LEE has supported artists working in video since its inception, and during our temporarily closure, we wanted to share a selection of works by some of our artists that are not otherwise available to view. Now you can watch them on our website from the comfort of your own home for a limited time.

RLVideo

Monday, March 30th at 11am – Mariam Ghani and Erin Ellen Kelly: Like Water from a Stone

Like Water From a Stone was produced during a residency in southwestern Norway during the summer of 2013. The title, a play on the English idiom ‘like blood from a stone,’ refers to the difficulty of extracting either oil from the undersea deposits on the continental shelf, which underpin much of the Norwegian economy today, or a living from the rocky Norwegian land and unruly North Sea. During the residency, one question kept resurfacing: “What was life in Norway like before oil production came online?” And one answer kept presenting itself: “An endless struggle, wresting a living away from fields and pastures full of stones and a cold, unruly, unforgiving sea.” Stone and sea seemed to be the twin pillars of existence in the region before the advent of offshore oil, and that too could be interpreted as springing from or being squeezed from stone and then being carried through and across the sea. So the themes of work became stone, water, extraction, and struggle against a landscape that is simultaneously sublime and awful, existing on a scale that overpowers most human endeavor.

Please check the gallery’s website and social media for more information.