Francis Gomila
Francis Gomila, Night Out, 2003, video, shown at Friar House, Newcastle upon Tyne
In Francis Gomila’s Night Out we witness a conflict between a man and a woman in the street. The row comes to an unresolved end when the passive-aggressive male is ousted from his peer group by the timely arrival of the police. This real-time video employs no visual effects to soften its emotional impact, adding only a melancholic song, colouring our sympathies as we follow the journey of the ‘wounded’ male returning to the scene of his folly – just as the proverbial dog returns to his vomit.
The high vantage perspective of Night Out doesn’t merely restrict Gomila’s own creative identity, it also presents us with paradigms and proposes that the situation is within our own grasp. The language is gestural, without manipulation, so fluent that its ordinary quality could easily insult our expectations. Therein lie the parallel dialogues between the desires employed in our observation of the world and the encapsulated narrative of the expectations present within the desires between two people.
Gomila’s work has frequently reflected the circular reasoning of man and his status in failed social conditions. Night Out presents these motifs not only within the confusion of the central male character, whose assumptions for the evening have utterly collapsed, but also as we think in response, ‘if you could only see yourself!’ We are thus reminded that to make any judgement strongly implicates us as peers and, thereby, also as participants.
Share this page