The Video Show – Serpentine Gallery, London – Iamdead

Iamdead was a video-work based on an installation with performance and video elements. Exhibited at The Video Show, Serpentine Gallery, London in 1975, along with two other works, Emotive Progression, and IamDead. Unfortunately all three works were lost and only photographs of the making of the works survive.

These photographs below were taken during the videoing of the performance, and exist as the remaining documentation from this videotape. Prints derived from this video performance circulated and were showed as autonomous works.

From Shemilt’s description and these images, it is clear that the video was divided in two performative sequences: the first shot in her home garden, with Shemilt in a gown and shrouded in a veil, manipulating a Perspex human figure within an installation composed by several elements including a ladder and a stool; the second was a performance by the artist, naked, shot in the house cellar.