LOOKING AT SOMEONE LOOKING

Rebecca Orcutt's uneasy search for meaning and consequence

- MICHAEL J. PEARCE

If the alienated and frightened lyrics of Radiohead's OK Computer were paintings, perhaps they would shape themselves under the brush of Rebecca Orcutt, whose pictures are the visual songs of her generation. She says her work "...is reflective of my feeling of the world. Most of it is about waiting and expectation, and belief. The figures are in situations where they really want to believe in what they're doing and believe that there's a purpose to it, but there's this insecurity and fear that they're wrong about how they're choosing to make meaning in their lives." Her cast of characters her friends and fellows-pose for her as she builds narratives about their hope that what they're doing in life matters.

They seem to dwell in a world where they may be fitter, happier and more productive; living comfortably, not drinking too much and getting regular exercise at the gym three days a week, but they are constantly nagged by the feeling that their opinion is of no consequence and their actions are meaningless. Take Stop Now and it was all for Nothing. Somehow the stilled motion of a girl playing with a spinning hula hoop is connected to the frozen inaction of a jammed fan, which buzzes like a fridge. What is her purpose? Her spinning is trivial and worthless, and the fan is broken. Whatever weird relationship exists between what she does and what happens is disconnected. She is split and blanked by a faceless wall, withdrawn into a bare and private space within the windowed world of the barren and secluded frame, alone. "It was about an irrational connection between unrelated events," Orcutt explains. "I wanted something dark and ominous about the figure being partly concealed, and maybe thinking that it's stupid, what they're doing, but it's an obsession and they can't stop because if they do, it was all a waste of time." She is afraid that there is nothing underneath the actions of life.