Selectors' Comments:
'CONGO!' became a New Contemps jury-rallying cry after we squinted through Gemma Pardo's wilfully confounding seascape. Visual metaphor? Optical rebus? Pardo's Congo 1880 has no punch line or crucial climax: it just persists and shifts almost imperceptibly. Given the history – and related histories – the continual oscillation between quasi-clarity and blur, absence and anticipation of resolution seems an exceedingly effective metaphor.


A real trick, decidedly plausible until the birds are very big and the deceptive expanse, of the same title, comes down to being a rather local, real creek. A sweet, possible film piece, not too heavy in the extended fantasy of elsewhere.


Artist's Statement:
The video Congo 1880 portrays the tide rising in a harsh landscape against an indistinct horizon. Water slowly engulfs the land. The camera then unexpectedly shows industrial buildings in the distance, beyond the water

[LESS]
Selectors' Comments:
'CONGO!' became a New Contemps jury-rallying cry after we squinted through Gemma Pardo's wilfully confounding seascape. Visual metaphor? Optical rebus? Pardo's Congo 1880 has no punch line or crucial climax: it just persists and shifts almost imperceptibly. Given the history – and related histories – the continual oscillation between quasi-clarity and blur, absence and anticipation of resolution seems an exceedingly effective metaphor.


A real trick, decidedly plausible until the birds are very big and the deceptive expanse, of the same title, comes down to being a rather local, real creek. A sweet, possible film piece, not too heavy in the extended fantasy of elsewhere.


Artist's Statement:
The video Congo 1880 portrays the tide rising in a harsh landscape against an indistinct horizon. Water slowly engulfs the land. The camera then unexpectedly shows industrial buildings in the distance, beyond the water