London’s Hayward Gallery’s mini doc with Emma Talbot, titled ‘Winter Light – Emma Talbot ✨’ explores Talbot’s installation ‘Birds, Freedom, a feature of the gallery’s upcoming exhibition, ‘Winter Light’. The gallery’s in-house media team appears to have been behind the production of this series of promotional videos for the exhibition. The quality of the editing speaks to that, further indicated by the shots of the artist being interviewed via Zoom suggests that the video’s creator had firm filming guidelines to work within due to the pandemic. The content is about Talbot’s intent behind the piece being displayed in Winter Light. She describes passionately the characterisation of the woman depicted in her piece, a “product of lockdown” in which the woman seeks to a world outside, to “capture that sense of wonder”.
Talbot explains her philosophical messaging the piece aims to communicate, meanwhile the shots of Emma are brief. This keeps the audiences’ eyes on the installation itself, watching with Emma’s descriptions of its narrative played on top of the visual. The shots of Talbot’s work are a mix of the file which is projected onto the walls of the gallery and a camera on a tripod panning from left to right showing it on display. Part of why I gravitated towards this video was because of Talbot’s voice. She speaks softly and clearly; her passion about the work and its messaging rings true above the soft backing music. This brings the audiences into the inner world of the artist and the piece itself. Keeping the focus mostly on the artistic work in question made for a captivating promotional video, facilitating the audience’s investment into the work and the artist behind it.