UCSD Open Studios: Kelly Pendergrast

Kelly Pendergrast

Sweaterland, xmas photos 2006

Relational Athletics (in progress), 2006

Why I Ate Myself, video still, 2006

Born and raised in the windy isles of New Zealand, I arrived in San Diego in 2005, stunned by the sun and the mild, empty air. While I profess to be a filmmaker, my interests in handcraft and academic research are equally strong, and inflect all of my film and mixed-media work. I completed a BA in film and media studies at the University of Otago with a dissertation on the visceral cinematic body before moving towards film and video making. My last, recently completed film "Why I Ate Myself" is about formative eating-related experiences, and combines strictly formal acted recreations with stop-motion animation and a bit of raw meat.

My San Diego installation/sculpture work has been obsessed with coupling texture, interactivity, hot glue, and the colour red with ideas stolen from digital art and activism. How can I make an internet that is rough and clumsy rather than depthless and screen-bound? What does a rhizome look like when it�s made of confused people and pieces of connecting string? The incongruous/impossible nature of these pursuits is not lost on me.

Currently, I am working on a digital/super8 film about the day the 1981 Springbok tour came through Palmerston North. I hope it won�t be too arcane.

Other influences: Temp jobs, Moby Dick, limited funds, peanut butter toast.

Kelly Pendergrast

Artists