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A large video work exploring the destructive yet ceremonial spectacle of pyrotechnic display.
Nick Crowe and Ian Rawlinson's The Carrier's Prayer is a single-channel video projection that takes its cue from the phenomenon of scally fireworks rudimentary pyrotechnics made from coiled-up plastic bags which larking lads have been known to let off in the empty shells of dilapidated industrial buildings.
In Crowe and Rawlinson's installation, these rag-tag homemade devices acquire a strangely meditative, almost religious complexion. Huddled together in the half-light of a deserted church, spitting out gobbets of liquid fire while giving off eerie caterwauling noises, the fireworks resemble a communion of lost souls. Ordinarily, each tongue of flame would fall towards the ground, but, here, in a reversal of the natural order, they rise, beseechingly, towards the heavens, as if in an act of collective prayer, before dying away a violent bang followed by a ghostly whimper.
Shown as part of At 25 metres alongside three new works commissioned by FACT; The Fireworks, The Name of God and Two Leprechauns.
Newlyn Art Gallery, 15-Nov-08 to 28-Jan-09
Newlyn Art Gallery
New Road
Newlyn
Penzance
TR18 5PZ
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