Sarah Jane Parton

The Best Trick (Everyone Smiles at Hotel Smile) (2016)

4 min 6 secSingle channel / Digital Video / Colour / Sound

The artist lies in a Kuala Lumpur hotel room under a bedspread made from t-shirts of a large Malaysian energy supplier. She gazes blankly at the hotel TV screen while a naive pop song plays in the background. As she watches the television she occasionally she grips the bedspread or offers a pained expression in response to what she sees on the screen. Animated symbols of a banana are overlaid, and the video cuts to a gif of a baby dancing in looped lock step with the music, and an excerpt from a Malaysian beauty contest. The images of naive entertainment contrast with the political implications of the energy logos sewn on to the bedspread, and the artists own pose on the bed, which is both open and circumspect.

Other works by Sarah Jane Parton

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