Dominated by iridescent abstract images, the video Gentlemen is an extension of Oliver Payne and Nick Relph’s first works. In the tradition of Driftwood and Mixtape which were centred around English ‘youth culture’, Gentlemen is interested in dance clubs that the neighbourhood surrounding Carnary Street in London was once famous for, but which has now been ‘cleaned up’ and filled with rows of shops.

Like in Driftwood, also in a twenty-minute format, the video Gentlemen is accompanied by a musical soundtrack (drums, incessant blips resembling Morse code, and songs by Nirvana), and a voiceover monologue. Nevertheless, here it is the toilets and images of light (decorations, Christmas displays, flashes, blinking or abstract lights) that replace the subject of the skateboard in order to illustrate the London subculture.

According to the artists, toilets are “places where you find private behaviour in a public environment. They can be completely ordinary, just somewhere to go to the loo, or they can be sexual spaces. They are really a theatrical site […]. Gentlemen is trying to embrace what most people find ugly about this city.” [1]

Consistently influenced by their musical culture, the films of Oliver Payne and Nick Relph also aim to create an experience similar to a “visual rave for the cinema”.

Géraldine Mercier
Translated by Anna Knight

[1] “West End Boys. Frieze talks to Oliver Payne and Nick Relph”, Frieze, n°75, May 2003, p. 70.