Untitled (2009) Single channel video with audio (duration: 4 mins).
Untitled was made for the Goldsmiths MFA Degree show 2009. It has also been screened at Sluice Art Fair (London), The Bangkok Art and Cultural Centre (Thailand), Moon Event Space (China), Espacio Enter Canarias Festival (Spain), Shantiroad Studio Gallery (India), Bangalore Foundation for Contemporary Indian Art (India) and Woodmill Studios (London).
Press:
'Untitled (I believe…) represents a profession of belief that has the potential to be substantiated by the promise of The Great Truth that Untitled never delivers. Ambiguously operating as both artworks and statements, these videos formulate a particular provocation. They assert the existence of their object: Art as Truth, without ever revealing it. As such, through this thwarted revelation, they truly position art as an object of worship by making it articulate a demand for faith in the absence of material fact and certainty.'
Communities, litanies, rituals and apparitions by Stephanie Bertrand
'The work oscillates between this strategic distancing, a common trait in recent contemporary art, that of the liberal ironist, and a fervent belief in the words spoken. It is this oscillation, or rather, the works’ indecision between one form and another that unsettles. This tactical undecidability is primarily hidden in the work as Pickering over-identitifies with a position we feel uncomfortable accepting, we feel she must be performing or staging this naïve set of beliefs, otherwise we take her for naïve.'
Fact: Darren Harvey-Regan and Kate Pickering Tom Trevatt
'Often casting herself as the central figure, her films draw on issues around existentialism, belief and the question of a gift or talent as a bestowed virtue. It is not always clear to the viewer whether the dead-pan character Pickering presents is a reality, or if the viewers themselves are being taken on a ‘ride’...Pickering seems to cast herself, in both text and film, as a prophet-like figure, questioning the meaning of art and creating a discourse that is at home in the post-modern world. Her manner could be perceived as ephemeral or faltering, yet her apparent message and choice of words are by contrast absolutely direct.'