Christmas at George and Irma's

Thomas Jack Brown

“The motivation behind applying for 'It Gets Lighter From Here' stemmed from viewing the raw material, an archive of home movie reel, and which I am using to create 'Christmas at George and Irma's'. When this opportunity was advertised it felt like a very natural fit to apply in the hope of bringing a light to dormant material and an opportunity to show my reinterpretation of these wonderful archive images. ”

Thomas's proposal

'Christmas at George and Irma's' is a sixty-second video art piece showing Thomas Jack Brown's reinterpretation of archive footage of a family enjoying the Christmas period in 1969. Segments of film that capture human behaviour during Christmas have been opaquely layered over close-ups of objects associated with Christmas. In doing this, Thomas to collapse the captured events into a shorter reinterpreted narrative and aims to show his view of how memories tied to recurring events, such as Christmas Day, collapse into a collection where memories tied to recurring events blur and bleed into one another. 

About the artist

Thomas Jack Brown is a video artist, video installation artist and media freelance producer based in Worcestershire, United Kingdom. His current practice focuses on the reconstructive nature of memory. He does this by hand-crafting archive or self-shot Super8 film to change the captured images on the negatives.

Thomas Jack Brown