The piece showing at Fieldgate Gallery is a single screen part of an intended four-screen installation showing the same urban landscape scene in four different seasons, each for an 8-hour recorded timeframe. It is a single unedited selection from dozens of recordings of the same scene throughout one year.

It is accepted that we have to "suspend disbelief" to enjoy most theatrical productions. Similarly, we "suspend our own flow of time" to enjoy most conventional films or TV programs. Even many moving image works shown in art contexts require this unacknowledged agreement by the audience to submit to the duration of time needed to view the piece.

Thames Reflections uses digital moving image technology to present a work with perhaps more affinity to traditionally static artworks such as paintings or photographs than most other moving image experiences. With static works the viewer remains active in the time taken to experience the work rather than being dictated to by the maker. And the same is true here - but there is also movement. Time is present in the piece, but it is natural time, not edited time. There is stillness and movement.

Following in a very long tradition of western landscape art, it extends the observation or depiction of a landscape to include the passage of time. And that reveals the actual movement of objects within the frame, and of the light, that can only be alluded to in traditional forms.

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Peter Donebauer - November 2007