THE BIRDS

For the second edition of London Gallery Weekend, Trafalgar Avenue presents THE BIRDS a solo exhibition by Garrett Pruter

The exhibition centres around an ongoing work in which Pruter removes all the birds from Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. In the classic 1962 film (based on the short story by Daphne du Maurier), a small seaside community is terrorised by a series of unexplained bird attacks. Through a process of frame-by-frame digital painting, rotoscoping, and sound editing, Pruter recontextualises the film, distorting its narrative by erasing the perceived threat.

For this exhibition, Pruter is showing a single scene from the re-edited film - the climactic scene in which crows ominously gather on the playground bars outside an idyllic schoolhouse, unseen by the film’s protagonist until their attack is imminent. In his re-edit, the playground bars remain empty except for fuzzy, erratic fragments left behind by the erasure’s imperfections. Whilst a sense of the threat remains palpable, the source is no longer discernible. Tension builds but is frustratingly never released. Pruter’s THE BIRDS is a contemporary reimagining of the Hitchcock film and a commentary on the fragility of the human psyche. Alongside the video, Pruter will present a large-scale installation and a series of prints.

Pruter’s practice revolves around a varying process of erasing, liquifying, and rematerialising images into new iterations. By reconfiguring a growing archive of vernacular photographs, soap operas, erotic thrillers, and objects from his own personal history, Pruter aims to unravel traces of consciousness and desire lying dormant beneath the image’s surface. 

On the occasion of the exhibition, Pruter discusses the ideas behind this work and his wider artistic practice with Chris Bayley and Mels Evers.