In a parallel universe, Darren Banks makes drawings of enigmas, blobs, microbes, and beasts from beyond. In this, his elusive process of slow erasure produces phantasms of a homespun calibre. A collage of film clips feature (or rather don’t feature) the invisible man, revealing (or not) ‘When Nobody’s There’ (2006). An over zealously washed baseball cap ‘Hotwash’ (2006) will eventually disintegrate, cleaned to death by mum. ‘That Phantom Sock’ (2006) you’ve been looking for down the back of the sofa dematerializes as it vanishes up the end of the large hadron collider.
Banks summons up these phantoms not to divulge themselves, but to playfully engage more of our time by obsfucating and deceiving us further. ‘Public Sculpture/Private Radar’ (2008) loops an anomalous remnant of sci-fi to create a retro-futuristic hybrid of a radar station and Moore-esque monumentalism. ‘Palace Video’ (2005) is constructed from the first few animated frames of an old VHS rental tape, rapidly rewinding and advancing footage of a lightning struck Schloss frame-by-frame to create a teasing gothic air of suspense. The loop crescendos to a studied anti-climax that reveals, ironically, that it is just an anti-piracy warning, guaranteed disappointment that would do Scooby Doo.
Banks contaminates his world by what is absent. It’s a mash up of once familial things that don’t, as yet, hold any value: old white goods, doodles, executive toys, VHS tapes. He plays with domestic pondlife, the fringeworthy, the car boot beatific, the stuff you stuck in the attic and pretended wasn’t there. These are cultural experiences and objects that fill up our days and kill our time, the bits of our consumer lives that aren’t normally considered worth freecycling. It’s where the action isn’t. Putting the kettle on but forgetting to make the tea, hunting for a lost sock but never finding it, sticking on a video but failing to get past the titles. Banks’ devotion to disturbances of meaning are the things that screams are made of.
Banks summons up these phantoms not to divulge themselves, but to playfully engage more of our time by obsfucating and deceiving us further. ‘Public Sculpture/Private Radar’ (2008) loops an anomalous remnant of sci-fi to create a retro-futuristic hybrid of a radar station and Moore-esque monumentalism. ‘Palace Video’ (2005) is constructed from the first few animated frames of an old VHS rental tape, rapidly rewinding and advancing footage of a lightning struck Schloss frame-by-frame to create a teasing gothic air of suspense. The loop crescendos to a studied anti-climax that reveals, ironically, that it is just an anti-piracy warning, guaranteed disappointment that would do Scooby Doo.
Banks contaminates his world by what is absent. It’s a mash up of once familial things that don’t, as yet, hold any value: old white goods, doodles, executive toys, VHS tapes. He plays with domestic pondlife, the fringeworthy, the car boot beatific, the stuff you stuck in the attic and pretended wasn’t there. These are cultural experiences and objects that fill up our days and kill our time, the bits of our consumer lives that aren’t normally considered worth freecycling. It’s where the action isn’t. Putting the kettle on but forgetting to make the tea, hunting for a lost sock but never finding it, sticking on a video but failing to get past the titles. Banks’ devotion to disturbances of meaning are the things that screams are made of.
