Europe
John Wood and Paul Harrison
3-Legged
1997
3-Legged, 1997 (still)
3-Legged is an early video work by John Wood and Paul Harrison in which they appear with their legs tied together (as one would do in a three-legged race). Wood and Harrison stand together in a narrow alcove built into their studio, dressed similarly in grey long sleeve shirts and jeans. Facing a tennis ball machine that is almost completely out of view, with only the barrel of the machine protruding from the bottom of the frame, they hobble back and forth across the alcove attempting to avoid the tennis balls launching toward them, with varying degrees of success. Framed as a pseudo-scientific experiment, the work is a humorous commentary on variability, failure, and the nature of artistic collaboration and cooperation.
John Wood and Paul Harrison have been working collaboratively since 1993, producing single screen and installation-based video works. Their work investigates the relationship between the human figure and architecture, developed through short form video with particular emphasis on actions being formulated and resolved within a given duration. Their artistic practice spans the use of the frame, minimal aesthetics, associations of everyday objects and low-tech visual tricks, the making of micro-trivial actions – whose results are invariably between obvious failure and random success.