The advice shape

A solo show commissioned for and by 'Outpost Gallery' in Norwich. This is a two- screen video installation with sculptural elements. The Advice Shape is an immersive double screen video installation projected in a darkened chamber Thomas has constructed within the existing gallery walls. An arrow directs the audience into the installation through black and white slit curtains familiar to nightclubs, strip joints and festivals. Inside the chamber the curtains line two ends of the space and are freighted with a sense of anticipation. At each end domestic projector screens face each other. On the farthest an uncanny doubling of the slit curtains sways gently in a breeze, alternating with an androgynous nurse wearing a rubber head. This queer presence has an obscure intelligence about it and gestures at the audience as if undertaking some kind of aptitude test to no apparent ends. On the facing screen is a hybrid semi-narrative of sensationalist still and moving images, audio, blocks of colour, spoken word, performance and text. Appropriated imagery of natural disasters, mutated animals, abject beauty, American genocide and stuffed effigies coexist with chirrupy 1950s advertising music or romantic classical. The soundtrack manipulates your judgment through a rollercoaster of affective registers