TV Dinners

In the Shadow of the Hand is a collaborative project that brings into conversation the artistic practices of Sarah Forrest and Virginia Hutchison. Since the collaboration began in 2012, In the Shadow of the Hand has incorporated writing, object making, performance and film to explore the relationship between an art object and the language that surrounds it.

At Deveron Projects, In the Shadow of the Hand hosted five TV Dinners – five film clubs, open to anyone who wanted to join the artists to watch a film, share a meal and conversation. The films were a mixture of shorts and features by filmmakers and artists that have been selected by In the Shadow of the Hand as the starting point for an ongoing conversation that considers what it means to be ‘social’.

TV Dinners was conceived in the wake of the pandemic, at a time when Virginia and Sarah were trying to remember, or perhaps reimagine, what it meant to be social. As cinemas, theatres, clubs and galleries closed their doors, the arts shifted online offering access to collections, performances, art works and film via digital devices. To spend time together quite quickly came to mean spending time with a screen. TV Dinners was not proposed as an antidote to this, but with the hope that by spending time together watching films, eating and talking (in the same room!) we might be able to collectively unpick the question, ‘what does it mean to be social today?’.

With conversation at the heart of everything that they do, In the Shadow of the Hand were keen that the film club – and the hospitality that surrounds it - was a generative process that lead to the production of new moving image and sculptural work. What sort of temporary communities can form around the edges of an artwork? How are these communities and conversations recorded or remembered? What are the wider implications of ‘being social’? What could this look like or mean for us as individuals, organisations or as artists?

Throughout the course of the project, In the Shadow of the Hand worked with recycled aluminium - beginning life as a series of TV food trays distributed to each member of the film club, the objects were remelted, culminating in the creation of an aluminium projection screen which was used in the final events to present the new moving image work created collectively by the artists and the community. Infinitely recyclable and adaptable, aluminium lends itself to a sculptural production project due to its physical properties, but it is also representative of a culture of disposable production. Following the journey of this material from utensil to cinema screen and public sculpture, allowed us to explore ideas of transition in relation to material and immaterial encounters. It also presented the opportunity to consider what might happen to the screen in the future. Could it be re-melted and folded into new conversations?