26 Sep 2012

Film and Video Umbrella: new online artist commissions

To mark the Charles Dickens bicentenary in 2012, Film and Video Umbrella unveil four newly commissioned online artworks that take Dickens' final novel as an allegorical tale with numerous echoes in the present.

Manifesting in several locations both on and offline from the Dickensian heartland of Borough and Bankside to the author's birthplace in Portsmouth and his regular place of retreat along the North Kent coast near Margate, 'Our Mutual Friends' mobilises Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites to apply Dickens' satire on 'society', 'celebrity' and the superficiality of friendships to our contemporary cultural moment.

Instead of the Victorian scrapheaps and 'dustheaps' which loom large in the novel, the project highlights the vast accumulation of digital detritus that clutters our everyday lives, and draws parallels between an era of industrial dirt and waste and the apparently disposable and throwaway nature of contemporary digital communication.

In association with Turner Contemporary, Margate, Aspex Gallery, Portsmouth, and Jerwood Visual Arts, London with support from Jerwood Charitable Foundation.