Using her own mature, naked body as a site for experimentation, Vicky Smith captures herself falling into herself, time and again. A ghostly white, layered, still or trembling horizontal body is animated on hand-processed black-and-white film. Working with orthochromatic film stock — a naturally blue-sensitive film which emphasises the skin’s surface details (veins, freckles, blemishes and fine lines) — she adds texture to her body sculpture: a mass of limbs, torsos, hands, feet, and heads. As multiple superimpositions accrue, the body fragments and reappears, forming a ‘corps morcelé’ that resists coherence. In her silent, evocative meditation on the human body, gravity, falling and fragmentation, she also laces the film with humour: a crazed eye appears out of the darkness, and a cold sensation surges through us as a set of teeth are clenched and chattering. By doing so, she adds lightness or repair to resignation. She enjoys her own body, and that autonomy is mesmerising.
