For many years my media installations focused on historic photographs. They were a powerful tool for evoking a sense of yearning, and inevitable loss. I was fascinated by the lingering presence in photographic images. They offer something always just out of reach, something that is tempting and vulnerable because of its tenuous connection to the present.

However, I have become increasingly committed to exploring a more contemporary space. My move into video was fueled by a feeling that the stillness in photography represents a type of death, in the way that the moment of representation is always already past. Even the simplest motion brings a moment in to the present, bringing it to life. My videos often concentrate on the smallest of movements - creating a type of moving photograph.

Recently I have been concentrating on using text as the focus of my practice. My text-based videos, like my other work, relate small moments in time, and focus the viewer on desire, yearning, loss and confusion–the regular feelings that fill a life. There is also a lot of humour in my art, especially in the text works, which often hinge on a sense of self-ridicule.

In Falling from Grace, my most recent body of work, I use light as a metaphor for searching, stumbling and ultimately finding one’s way through the darkest of thoughts and places. The project grew organically, eventually taking the form of six separate but thematically linked ideas, or scenes, which range from beautifully vague to pointedly tasteless.

Sharon Switzer, 2007