The Jack Dunne Archive
For Robert Seydel
Sixty framed works including 35mm photographs, drawings, and mixed media works
Three 16mm films
One large trunk
2001 - 2002
Exhibited in:
What I Found in the Trunk, (solo thesis show)
Hampshire College Main Gallery
Amherst, MA
April 2002
The first film in the Jack Dunne trilogy, this film introduces us to the everyman on his way home asking the essential questions including why are we here and is there a god?
The second and central film of the Jack Dunne trilogy, this film explores the story of the everyman by casting him as a marble in a house.
The third film of the Jack Dunne trilogy, here we are introduced to the love of his life Katrina as we hear him speaking to her.
About the work: The Jack Dunne Archive is the culmination of more than one year's work while an undergraduate student at Hampshire College, where I was majoring in Film and Photography. During my junior year I took a leave of absence from school and found work in Paris, France where I lived for more than four months. This generative, inspiring, and deepening time was captured by myself through photography, filmmaking, drawing and writing. When I returned for my final thesis year I printed many of these negatives and turned my experiences from France into experimental films, photographs, and artwork. I created a narrative around this new work: I had found it all in a trunk in the basement of my Paris apartment. I brought the trunk back to Hampshire and spent an entire year printing the work, finally mounting the show in April 2002. I acted as the curator, the artist was an unknown man named Jack Dunne. Most of the people who attended the show thought it really was his work, it was such a surprising and liberating experience to make work under a different name, identity, age, and gender. This work would not have been possible without the strong guidance of my mentors: Kane Stewart, Bill Brand, and most poignantly Robert Seydel who shared a deep love of pseudonyms with me and passed away much too soon after I graduated, way too young. This work will forever be in his honor and memory.