Reflective Encounters

“An animated photo montage that highlights the collation between the wide range of materials and artworks with the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery collection. By aligning and creating movement using artworks spanning multiple decades, techniques, forms and countries, McNally creates a new piece that reveals not only the scale of the online collection but prompts the audience to draw their own connections throughout the film. The soundtrack highlights the images as they flow through the piece, giving audible cues that add further intrigue to the visuals, whilst giving a mystical, almost sinister feel to the overall film.

What should perhaps be noted is the sheer volume of images that have been cropped and analysed in the film. The laborious nature of this way of working is sometimes missed in the frenetic nature of the piece, which evokes a sense of play whilst highlighting the minutiae of artworks. These details in a collection of this scale are often missed, but Excerpt captures those moments when idly perusing a museum, in which a piece speaks to us on a personal or perhaps unconscious level. By zeroing in on certain details, such as hands (the tools of the artist) and the eye (the window from which the artist views their work) McNally offers further meaning to the way in which we approach the collection.”

— Laura-Beth Cowley