two shanks – the film

two shanks is originaly a play written by Daniel Keene. Artist Catherine Bainbridge, inspired by the play, created artworks to be shown in her Melbourne exhibition, probing the abstract visual ideas circulating around the words of the script, their written appearance, and spoken meaning.

This short film features excerpts from the play powerfuly interpreted by Marco Chiappi in the role, which was originally perfomed by the late Lewis Fiander. All these media – the powerful writing, the stirring artwork, the performance and the B&W photographs of Lewis Fiander (by Jeff Busby) – combine into a moving short film directed, filmed and edited by Philippe Charluet, which forms part of and is screened within Catherine’s exhibition titled ‘…of script and facture…’ which was shown at the Fortyfivedownstairs gallery in Melbourne CBD in late 2018.

“And once so far into the night that no dawn seemed possible I thought I heard him cry out for me, or for some other, lost for something, at least beyond his small grasp, his blind grasp and in his cry there seemed to be a kind of light …

… all the entire world was sudden reduced to that sound, I thought I heard

And the whole earth illuminated”  — play excerpt written by Daniel Keene

In memory of Lewis Fiander
“My friend Lewis Fiander performed this play as part of the early 2000s Keene-Taylor project. I was particularly taken by the script and decided to work with it in collaboration with my own artwork.”  — Catherine Bainbridge

Featured video: 1 min Preview

Video Tab above: the full short film