Positioning the viewer in the centre of eight video screens that form a large octagon around them, the viewer becomes the pivot of the visual action played out in Goodwin’s powerful three-dimensional filmic arena.

In a series of continuous and disrupted panoramas, depicting both the mundane and the spectacular, the starting point of ‘Dilate’ is in the individual’s shifting physical and psychological relationship to the multifarious landscapes they move through. Through a series of episodes, Goodwin creates an experience of expanding and contracting horizons that challenge the viewer’s perception of physical and emotional space. The artist creates these immersive ‘wraparound’ images with a specially designed 360° eight mini-DV camera rig.

Exploring a mixture of contrasting environments, both populated and unpopulated, ‘Dilate’ moves through urban and rural expanses, such as coastal locations or open land, domestic and industrial landscapes and intimate and public spaces, from which a range of dynamic visual and aural experiences emerge; from the still and poignant to the wild and jostling. ‘Dilate’ explores how our shifting sense of self inscribes our perception of space and vice versa. Faced with an expansive landscape we can feel isolated, liberated or paralysed; as part of the city, anonymous, identified or alienated; in the domesticity of our homes, safe, confined or overwhelmed; in a virtual network, empowered, remote or victimised. 

‘Dilate’ was a Film and Video Umbrella Touring Exhibition, commissioned, in association with Manchester City Art Gallery.
Supported by the National Touring Programme of Arts Council England and The Henry Moore Foundation.

Installation Photography: Manchester Art Gallery.

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