Natasha Caruana Timely Tale

Natasha Caruana has been co-commissioned by HOUSE Biennial and Photoworks to create a new lens-based work. Timely Tale is set against a backdrop of love, desire and health in the age of Excess – the theme for this year’s festival.

Excess is explored in the artwork through the vehicle of the artist’s mother, Penny, and the audience will see the work in the setting of a ‘medical waiting room’.

To experience Penny’s story, viewers will be transported via the medical waiting room into her bedroom through a short film capturing: recuperation, finding the right outfit, storing medication and looking for the perfect online partner. The piece addresses the idea of choice and how, in the long run, too much choice can often lead to decision-making paralysis and its consequences.

As much as the work is a comment on our current social and political landscape, it is also an observation of how the photographic frame, with the advent of new technology, is dramatically changing for the first time. The work is viewed through headsets and Timely Tale uses 360° technologies to empower us to look around the artwork with choice of what to see.

Photoworks is a national development agency for photography. Photoworks’ programme includes commissions, new writing, participation and major projects including the national Jerwood/Photoworks Awards, Photoworks Annual and Brighton Photo Biennial. photoworks.org.uk

This HOUSE Biennial and Photoworks co-commission is presented in partnership with University of Brighton and supported by University for the Creative Arts at Farnham.