Commissioned works offer the chance to collaborate, explore different visual and conceptual ideas and work in previously unfamiliar areas of practice; dance and opera being two good examples. There is a fine line between commissions and collaborations, as with both you adapt your own singular practice for the sake of a joint project with a specific scope.

Still from Hinterland. Picture: Terry Braun

I have been lucky enough to have been commissioned to make and also collaborate with some great artists, companies and projects; Michael Nyman, Shobana Jeyasingh and in turn a range of composers; Jocelyn Pook, Donnacha Dennehy, Scanner and Errollyn Wallen, Natacha Atlas, English Touring Opera and Performa to name a few.

I have worked extensively with musicians and composers; this includes pop promos but also installations and film works. I love working with musicians.

These selection of films appear elsewhere in the site, but by clustering them together I can begin to make some distinction between work developed on my own and work made with other people and how the two cross over and influence each other.

In the context of my own personal practice, commissions offer the ability to work with larger budgets, different scales and often in my case, in the context of live performance.

My three commissions and collaborations with Shobana Jeyasingh afforded me total freedom to direct and make the films whilst being framed by the conceptual ideas of the devised piece.

The downside is that the extensive film and video work I have made for live performance is made in a very specific performative context. When the piece is over, the film work tends to be left in isolation, difficult to then re edit into other new forms which make sense away from the original context.

The exception to this was Hinterland which was remixed live as 'Voicelands' and performed as a live projected and mixed film with the two sopranos performing the score and framing the screen.

Commissions can also skew the visible clear thread of a more personal practice. It is still there, but it follows a more serpentine path. The division between these areas hopefully gains clarity over the wider scope of all my video works.

Please also look at my list of collaborations.