The television set has long been a venue of enchantment. It is at the same time real and fantastic, the source of endless inspiration and contemplative pretense. Soap operas in particular have become synonymous with open-ended melodrama consisting of exaggerated emotional storylines delivered episodically with no conclusion or resolution. Warren’s work takes up this daily creation and consumption of hopes and dreams and fears, using a 2-camera setup, bluescreen backdrops, a collection of costumes and a box full of wigs as the materials for her production. Warren performs via improvisation, then rewrites, reedits, and reperforms; a process that creates the storyline as well as the material that swirls around the story. 

Rosemary Warren’s work is that of both center stage and behind-the-scenes, simultaneously calmly composed and playfully tongue-in-cheek. As a photographer, performer and video artist, her work investigates traditionally feminine spaces, labor, entertainment and the self through critical analysis and whimsy.

Hope’s Horizon is presented at Thomas Van Dyke Gallery as a 3-channel video. The work was produced on-site in the gallery space throughout December 2022 and January 2023. Warren turned the gallery into her studio, where she performed as each of her created characters. These performances were later edited into the digitally constructed sets of Hope’s Horizon. The show’s title references the fictional seaside town of Hope, a vestige of her previous video Hope’s Bay, as well as the horizon on a shoreline, and an event horizon, the edge of a black hole from which nothing can return.