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New work by artist Jamie Crewe to be launched as part of Dr Chloë Kennedy’s project on Intimacy and Deception

Fri 8 April 2022

False Wife (2022) [still 01]

'False Wife', a new work by artist Jamie Crewe, commissioned as part of Dr Chloë Kennedy’s research into intimacy, deception and identity, aims to lead visitors through an ordeal of transformation.

As part of her AHRC Research Leader Fellowship on ‘Identity Deception: A Critical History’, Dr Chloë Kennedy, Senior Lecturer in Criminal Law, explores deception in intimate contexts, namely romantic and sexual relationships. The project examines how the law treats certain kinds of deceptions as relevant, but not others, and how the wrongs and harms associated with deception in these circumstances are understood.

As part of this project, Dr Kennedy and the University of Edinburgh Art Collection commissioned visual artist Jamie Crewe to produce work(s) that engaged with themes of the research. Over the course of a year, Jamie and Chloë worked independently on their respective project outputs, coming together regularly to discuss ideas along with colleagues from the Art Collection, Julie-Ann Delaney and Liv Laumenech.

Launched on 8 April 2022, Jamie Crewe’s art project, 'False Wife', is composed of a local website and a video. The former is a website hosted on a viewer’s own machine. The latter borrows the style of videos that amateur editors produce to watch while using the recreational drug amyl nitrate, also known as ‘poppers’. Such videos are typically montaged from existing clips and uploaded to adult video hosting sites, paired with on-screen text, hypnotic music, voiceovers, and explicit instructions for action. ‘False Wife’ mimics the form but not the content of these videos. Produced in the same style, it seeks to use these features to explore the eroticism of guidance and control, and work around the comforts of alleged passivity.

In speaking about their artwork, Jamie Crewe said: “'False Wife' is drawn from a variety of Scottish folk tales (plus a Scottish fairy in the French imagination, and one Scandinavian outlier) in which transformation occurs, and relationships happen. Its footage is scavenged from sources that reflect these themes, reduced to slivers of significant imagery, rubbed together. These originating sources are warped or inflamed to say ambiguous things: to cringingly consider the structures we create, or lean on, for a sense of groundedness in the world; to address desire, shame, transgression, and the longing for change; and to animate the various ways we want — and don’t want — to face such things.

“The local website, which must be downloaded to be viewed, stages a seduction which leads to this video. Things are hidden, or mysteriously weighted, and meanings are doubled; a sense of proceeding deeper is evoked, with both warm consideration and chilling gravity.”

Dr Kennedy further commented: “I was really pleased that Jamie responded to the call for artist proposals. I think their work has powerfully and imaginatively captured some of the ethical issues that are implicated in the research project and taken them further.

“For example, the format of the work raises questions about what it means to consent and invites reflection on contemporary conceptions of pleasure and intimacy, including sexual intimacy. To me, the substance of the work engages issues like how much transparency we expect – and can demand – from our intimate partners; the pain of discovering that a person or situation is not what you thought; and the pressure to adopt and maintain a specific form or set of commitments.

“By approaching these matters with a kind of shifting perspective, Jamie’s work encourages us to adopt different points of view and calls to our attention the duality, or multiplicity, of experiences that co-exist in intimate encounters and intimate relationships.”

'False Wife' will be available to download from 8 April 2022 to 6 May 2022.

Download 'False Wife'

As part of the project, the work will also join the permanent collection of the University Art Collection, to be used in research, teaching and presentation across the institution.

Notes to editors

About the AHRC Research Leader Fellowship: “Identity Deception: A Critical History”

Funded by an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Research Leader Fellowship grant (AH/S013180/1), the project, ‘Identity Deception: A Critical History,’ asks when, if ever, it is appropriate to punish a person who engages in identity deception (pretending to be someone they are not). Focussing in particular on intimate deceptions (deceiving another in order to induce intimacy, e.g., in the form of a romantic relationship, sexual encounter or marriage), the project looks at how deceptions of this kind, and indeed deception more generally, has been treated as a wrong that merits a legal response across the modern era (c. 1750 to the present).

View project website

About the 'False Wife' commission

'False Wife' was commissioned as part of ‘Identity Deception: A Critical History’, an AHRC Research Leader Fellowship project by Dr Chloë Kennedy, of The University of Edinburgh’s Edinburgh Law School. Artist Jamie Crewe was supported in this project by Dr Kennedy and Julie-Ann Delaney and Liv Laumenech of the University of Edinburgh’s Art Collection, and the work was greatly shaped by conversations between the four. The website was conceived by Jamie and Josh Anio Grigg, and built by Josh. The sound was mixed by Richy Carey and Jamie. Work with 16mm film was facilitated by two workshops run by not/nowhere: one focussing on cameraless filmmaking, and one introducing the Bolex 16mm camera. Film was digitised by James Holcombe.

About Jamie Crewe

Jamie Crewe is an award-winning artist who has presented several solo exhibitions across the UK. In 2020, they were awarded one of the ten bursaries from Tate Britain in place of the Turner Prize and selected for British Art Show 9, which opened in 2021.

Learn more about Jamie Crewe’s art

About the University of Edinburgh Art Collection

The University of Edinburgh has been engaged with the practices of commissioning, purchasing and displaying the work of artists for nearly 350 years. Amounting to nearly 8,000 artworks spanning two millennia, the collections core function is the support and development of research and teaching across the institution.

Learn more about the University of Edinburgh Art Collection

Please note: The article text was updated on 20/03/2024 to provide extra information about the content of the artwork. 

Credits

Video credit:

Jamie Crewe b. 1987
False Wife 2022
Colour video with sound (15 min. and 31 sec.), local website.

Image credit: 

Still from False Wife 2022
Colour video with sound (15 min. and 31 sec.), local website
Image courtesy of the artist © Jamie Crewe

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