Oliver Payne & Nick Relph

British artists Oliver Payne and Nick Relph chronicle contemporary culture through their eclectic style of film-making, which is part documentary, part music video, part surveillance tape and part video diary.

The dynamic relationship between sound and images in Oliver Payne and Nick Relph’s work is exemplified in Mixtape (2002), which is set to Terry Riley’s version of the song You’re No Good. Multi-layered soundtracks are also integral to their work: Gentlemen (2003), combines drums, Morse Code and a poetic narrative about corporate appropriation of youth culture. This is played over abstract images of lights and Christmas decorations filmed in London’s Carnaby Street, a location increasingly homogenized by multinational chains.

Winners of the Golden Lion for Best Artists Under 35 at the Venice Biennale in 2003, and nominated for the Beck’s Futures award in 2002, Payne and Relph have collaborated since the late 1990s. This exhibition at the Serpentine, the first devoted to the artists in a UK public gallery, surveyed their videos to date, including Comma, Pregnant Pause (2004), created on the occasion of the 2004-5 Carnegie International exhibition in Pittsburgh, as well as including new work, Sonic the Warhol, created in 2005.