christopher steadman


Home
The Only Way Down is Down
The Only Way Down is Down
4-monitor totemic elevator video installation
11:11 mins., looped, 4 synched DVDs, 8 synched audio tracks

'The Only Way Down is Down' takes on the disparate desperations of office boredom, machine horror, cultural signs and symbols, and manages to bring an elegant and almost symphonic quality to themes that might otherwise incur a sense of drudgery and despair. Steadman plays with the hidden dynamic of what goes on behind the closed doors of an elevator when anonymous strangers are forced to share a confined space. Through the tension and repetition of the opening and closing of elevator doors, the artist follows an insignificant character up and down the empty shaft of what becomes a powerful reminder of the banality and anonymity of urban modernisation.