The Nexus Treatment
︎ ︎ Flickr
The Nexus Treatment was created for the exhibition of the same name at Space Station Sixty Five Gallery.
The title came from the sign of a local beauty salon and hairdresser. Although I knew what the other services listed on the sign were, I had always wondered what "The Nexus Treatment" could be. I liked the name because it sounded futuristic, and the word "nexus", meaning a centre or point of connection, seemed to reflect the work. The animations show young girls dancing and practising routines at home, performing for the camera and placing themselves at the centre of attention.
Later I discovered that the Nexus Treatment is a conditioning treatment for Afro hair, designed to make it smoother and straighter. I also found references to the term in the United States, where it has been associated with products used to remove traces of drug use from hair before workplace testing. The title unexpectedly gathered several different meanings, all connected to transformation and appearance.
The animations are created using mirrored Victorian animation devices that I built by hand, inspired by the Praxinoscope. The mirrored viewing drum is reimagined as a faceted crystal or diamond, while the spinning platform is a record deck. The hand-drawn animations lie flat on the turntable and are reflected in the mirrored facets as they rotate.
I was interested in returning to these obsolete forms of animation after previously working almost entirely with computers. Using this "dead media" connected with ideas that run throughout my work: imitation, trying to fit in, the fear of being left behind, and the desire to belong. Some of this comes from my own experience of returning to the UK after living in Zambia as a teenager. I felt disconnected from the shared culture of people my own age, without the same reference points or sense of what was considered cool. Teen magazines became a way of trying to find my bearings and work out how to fit in again. Although that experience was personal, I think the fear of being an outsider is something many people recognise.
The animations are drawn from dancers in pop music videos. Viewed through the mirrored facets of the spinning crystals, these repeated movements are transformed by an early animation technique, bringing together nineteenth-century optical devices and contemporary popular culture.
Medium:
Record decks, paper, perspex mirror / mirror card, adhesive
Size:
variable
Shown in:
The Nexus Treatment Space Station Sixty-Five off site window project, Waterloo Health Centre, London (UK)
17 March – 14 July 2008
Iceberg Enters Obelisk Whitechapel Gallery, London (UK)
13 June 2008
My Magic Life Sartorial Contemporary Art, London (UK)
23 May – 19 June 2008
Blanc Noir Transition Gallery, London (UK)
13 Oct – 18 Nov 2007
The Nexus Treatment Space Station Sixty-Five, London (UK)
1 June – 15 July 2007
The Nexus Treatment was created for the exhibition of the same name at Space Station Sixty Five Gallery.
The title came from the sign of a local beauty salon and hairdresser. Although I knew what the other services listed on the sign were, I had always wondered what "The Nexus Treatment" could be. I liked the name because it sounded futuristic, and the word "nexus", meaning a centre or point of connection, seemed to reflect the work. The animations show young girls dancing and practising routines at home, performing for the camera and placing themselves at the centre of attention.
Later I discovered that the Nexus Treatment is a conditioning treatment for Afro hair, designed to make it smoother and straighter. I also found references to the term in the United States, where it has been associated with products used to remove traces of drug use from hair before workplace testing. The title unexpectedly gathered several different meanings, all connected to transformation and appearance.
The animations are created using mirrored Victorian animation devices that I built by hand, inspired by the Praxinoscope. The mirrored viewing drum is reimagined as a faceted crystal or diamond, while the spinning platform is a record deck. The hand-drawn animations lie flat on the turntable and are reflected in the mirrored facets as they rotate.
I was interested in returning to these obsolete forms of animation after previously working almost entirely with computers. Using this "dead media" connected with ideas that run throughout my work: imitation, trying to fit in, the fear of being left behind, and the desire to belong. Some of this comes from my own experience of returning to the UK after living in Zambia as a teenager. I felt disconnected from the shared culture of people my own age, without the same reference points or sense of what was considered cool. Teen magazines became a way of trying to find my bearings and work out how to fit in again. Although that experience was personal, I think the fear of being an outsider is something many people recognise.
The animations are drawn from dancers in pop music videos. Viewed through the mirrored facets of the spinning crystals, these repeated movements are transformed by an early animation technique, bringing together nineteenth-century optical devices and contemporary popular culture.
Medium:
Record decks, paper, perspex mirror / mirror card, adhesive
Size:
variable
Shown in:
The Nexus Treatment Space Station Sixty-Five off site window project, Waterloo Health Centre, London (UK)
17 March – 14 July 2008
Iceberg Enters Obelisk Whitechapel Gallery, London (UK)
13 June 2008
My Magic Life Sartorial Contemporary Art, London (UK)
23 May – 19 June 2008
Blanc Noir Transition Gallery, London (UK)
13 Oct – 18 Nov 2007
The Nexus Treatment Space Station Sixty-Five, London (UK)
1 June – 15 July 2007
Press Release:
The Nexus Treatment
A Space Station Sixty-Five Window Project
Diamonds are forever ...
Seen through these St. Laurent glasses
And I’ve realized that I’ve arrived...
Kanye West, from Late Registration
In the crystalline animated world of Sarah Doyle “The Nexus Treatment” whirls and sparkles forever and ever. Counter intuitively utilising a hand made methodology,and consciously eschewing technological processes Doyle has crafted a Victorianesque hall of mirrors, with images taken from popular culture.
In the often rarefied realm of pedantic high art Doyle’s constituency is a revolutionary one She passionately and precisely studies and reveals the complex codes of young teenagers. Trawling through outdated hip hop videos, talking to and working with her younger siblings she identifies the “watch me now” shapes and movements which signify a universal need to belong, to be part of a group to fit in and to show off.
Doyle’s appropriation of this world, however, is no cheap holiday, there is an immersion and identification with it which goes back to her own experience of arriving in England as a teenager having been brought up in Africa. Unaware of the prevailing popular culture signifiers, references to TV shows, and imperceptible shifts in style she found herself to be “uncool” an outsider.
Her work meshes this yearning to belong, with a magical kaleidescopia of desire. The looped hand drawn images revealed in the facets of the spinning jeweled mirrors, when cut from their original meaning, take on a hypnotic quality. Like tarnished ballerinas on the top of a music box, Doyle’s tough girls dance for eternity in their strangely compelling cabinet of curiosities.
The Nexus Treatment is based on the title of a salon sign Doyle found near her home in South London. When googled, Doyle was amazed to find that it was revealed to be “an organization that designs and operates treatment programs for a wide range of child and adolescent problems” and it was also “a conditioning treatment used on Afro hair to make it more silky and straight” Both meanings strangely reverberated with the artist’s work. “I really liked the name” says Doyle “ it sounded futuristic and with the nexus meaning the center of focus it fitted with the work I had in mind”
Mixing futuristic elements and contemporary cultural references with clunky hobbyesque machinery, The Nexus Treatment signposts not only novel methods of art production but also introduces new places from where that work can be made.
Text written by Alex Michon