In approximately 1823 a new team sport was invented at the English public school at Rugby. To honour this event a marker, which still stands on the grounds of the school, is inscribed with the following words: 'This stone commemorates the exploits of William Webb Ellis who, with a fine disregard for the rules of football as played at his time, first took the ball in his arms and ran with it thus originating the distinctive feature of the Rugby game.'¹

With a fine disregard for the rules of the game, Ellis wilfully and deliberately championed a different perception in the game of soccer, an act that would eventually lead to an entirely new sport. Additionally, the phrase implies that his team mates, the spectators and the game's rule makers and keepers ultimately acknowledged his wilful behaviour and, in so doing, sanctioned a permanent change. It is almost certainly the case that soccer players in the past had attempted the same tactic and had probably been met with a polite English reminder such as 'excuse me sir, but you can't pick up the ball', before being roughly kicked out of the game. But when Ellis did it with 'a fine disregard', timing, style, process and attitude all coalesced into an acknowledgement of potentiality and change. The late Kirk Varnedoe, former Chief Curator of Painting and Drawing at the Museum of Modern Art, New York attended the school at Rugby as a young adolescent and learned the fine art of the game there. One of his books is entitled A Fine Disregard, and in it he uses the phrase as a metaphor for what happens in modern art. His observation is that the great breakthroughs in art - the ruptures frequently referred to as 'avant-garde' - are like William Webb Ellis's decision to run with the ball instead of kicking it.

You may be wondering what all this has to do with the art of Sharon Lockhart. Well, consider this: A photograph looking into a room where we can see a part of a bed without much bed linen, on which are lying the long, thin legs of an otherwise unseen figure. The room is carpeted. There is a window with a window seat, partly obscured by the right-hand side of the doorjamb. This open door, through which we are looking, is flanked by another open door on the other side of the bed. Through that door we are able to see a short flight of stairs leading to a closed door. To the left of the flight of stairs is another three-quarter-length window. The left-hand frame of the door through which we are looking obscures this. From the perspective of the viewer, and thus the camera and (perhaps) the artist, the image also reveals what appears to be a wall to the left-hand side of the photo divided by a strip of moulding about 32 inches up the wall, with the lower section of the wall painted darker than the upper section. On closer inspection, however, our gaze reveals that the upper half of the 'wall' is either made from transparent material, or is perhaps wallpapered and we can see a vague pattern revealing itself through the semi-darkness or... there are a number of other possibilities equally feasible. In any event the wall appears to end, suggesting that the corridor bends round a corner. But all we can see is a solid black void both in front of and behind the end of the corner of the wall.

Or consider this: A young girl sits at what appears to be a glass-topped table. Head resting on one of her outstretched arms, she seems to be dozing or sleeping. In any event her eyes are closed. The tabletop reveals a partial reflection of the girl's head and long hair, as well as the desert vegetation that we can see behind the reclining girl. The reflected surface also has a pale yellow, 'reflected' line of an object we cannot see. Or can we see half of the real object and half of its reflection? Is the girl holding onto an object that is obscured by her right arm? And while we're at it - is the girl inside or outside? Is she faking sleep? Does it matter? Well, yes. And no.

Or perhaps we might consider this: A diptych, or at least two photographs always displayed one next to the other. They are entitled Lily (approximately 8 am, Pacific Ocean) and Jochen (approximately 8 pm, North Sea). In one photograph we see a young adolescent girl with a bad case of acne wearing a plum-coloured T-shirt with a white neckband. She appears to be staring just below and to the right of the camera. Her gaze is somewhat sad, reflexive and still; she appears forgetful of the camera. Behind her is the vastness of the sea, a deep blue against the girl's dark top. The sea is an elemental force, alive and strong in stark contrast to the quiet, introverted stare of the young girl. The other photograph is of a young boy, around the same age as the girl, although his acne is not quite as rabid. He is acutely aware of the camera, staring directly into the camera's eye, perhaps somewhat defiantly staring it down. He is dressed in a light-blue T-shirt with a red, white and blue neckband, and the sea behind him is darker, the colour of an oncoming storm perhaps? The calm before the storm? Or is it merely the effect of the time of day when the lighting doesn't reflect the colour as garishly as it does in the other photo? These are the questions we would be asking ourselves if we did not know the descriptive titles of the two parts of the piece. Other questions quickly crowd in. In both photographs the figures occupy the foreground centre of the image with only a little patch of sea to the left and right of them. Are they standing at the helm of a boat? Or at the edge of the beach? In both photographs the horizon line is distinctive; both are roughly the same colour - a light blue/green/grey. Is this coincidental? Are these photos part of a series? Or are they meant to depict some kind of relationship between the boy and girl? A relationship that suggests distance? Time? Space? The mental and emotional states that differentiate gender?

In light of these descriptions of earlier photographs made by Lockhart, it would not be unreasonable to assume that we are discussing an artist whose primary concerns fall within the conceptual and the structural realms of art history. The most basic assumptions about a structuralist reading of an artwork is its emphasis on symbol, design, systems and the control of those systems by the artist. The main focus lies in the structure rather than a wider context where issues of interpretation in a broader sense are severely reduced. We 'read' the image as a highly schematised pattern where reflections, repetitions and parallels become verbal diagrams.

And indeed much of the art criticism that has been written about Sharon Lockhart's work resides in the arenas of conceptualism and structuralism. Not that this statement is in any way an inherent criticism of the many thoughtful and elegant critiques of her work. Yet I have always remained puzzled by Lockhart's art when I attempt to look at it solely in these terms. There is a sophistication that is highly visible in her photos, films and videos that clearly declares the artist's knowledge, use and indeed affection for structuralism. But to some degree this is merely a framing device that enables her to produce a layering effect in which paradoxical and ambiguous messages hover around, within and through the work. These homeless ghosts also anchor the work, placing it solidly in a space of... what? Ah, there's the rub.

Attempts to categorise Lockhart's work always seem to fail. Is the artist playing with issues of reality and fiction? Does she privilege the scientific, clinical gaze over the romantic stare? The personal over the universal? Does she offer the Lacanian gaze or Derrida's floating, dissolved, constructed subjects? For me, the answer to all these propositions is a very decided yes and no. I would suggest she shares a 'fine disregard' for the rules and devices of structuralism much as William Webb Ellis did for the rules of the game of football.

In order to locate the mysterious power in this work, it seems logical to go back to Lockhart's art-historical roots. Over a span of ten years, from 1993 to 2003, we can locate her work in an era in which whenever the human figure was the central focus we were almost always confronted with the pathologies of the body. This suggested a deliberate movement away from the issues that had characterised art of the eighties - questions of artifice, hyper-reality and consumer savvy. Here, the visceral images of mortal remains reflected back on the experience of death itself. And yet such works as Joel-Peter Witkin's photograph of a sliced human head are horrific precisely because of the viewer's incapacity to find anything shocking about them. In the early to mid-1990s it seemed that aesthetic indifference had taken a pathological twist that resulted, not so much in a fascination with the morbid, as in a reaction to contamination. A sense of the body as a polluted vessel pervaded Mike Kelley's used nursery toys, Charles Ray's biologically correct mannequins and Robert Gober's transsexual torsos, as well as Kiki Smith's skin-like paper sculptures or Paul McCarthy's kinetic sex crimes. Such abject works seemed intent on breaking the pristine commodity status of earlier 80s work. In an attempt to disrupt the impersonality of art's veneer, it produced shocking encounters with the hidden, private and personal. Works of this kind seemed like the terminal expression of a disenchantment with culture.

So is Khalil, Shaun, A Woman Under the Influence directly related to such work? After careful viewing, the answer is most definitely no. The film is divided into distinct areas of concern: the clinical presentation of fake scars and wounds as they are moved around on the boys' bodies. At first there is a feeling of sympathy and horror that gradually turns as our gaze understands the boyish sense of glee that kids get from playing with gross props and fake makeup. In the re-reading of a heart-breaking scene from John Cassavetes's A Woman Under the Influence, the viewer is privy both to the original feelings evoked in Cassavetes's film coupled with the image of Shaun still delighting in his made-up body.

For the first time we begin to glimpse the techniques and methods that Lockhart employs consistently throughout her work. First and foremost there is always an astonishing honesty, which may at times seem either paradoxical or at odds with a first viewing of the work. This authenticity has roots as deeply implanted in the foundation of her work as are the structuralist devices. Her decision to reference John Cassavetes in this strange context has a lot to do with the shared philosophy of both Cassavetes and Lockhart: a reverence for a certain kind of truth. John Cassavetes believed in nothing so much as the value of a truthful performance. The writing (or in Lockhart's case, the preparation and idea for the work) was what you thought, but the performance was something more - it was how you lived. 'You know as a director what you want,' he said, 'but the film is smarter than you, the film says no, the film says there's something more here.' That 'something more' came from what was discovered during performance.

This is also what one 'gets' in Lockhart's work. For however much she employs structuralist devices to frame her work there is always the 'something more'. And I think it has to do with instinct; something Lockhart herself cannot pin down. Or perhaps is not ready to face. John Cassavetes stood alone in the independent film world because he had the courage to present our awkward moments. This is what Lockhart presents in Khalil, Shaun, A Woman Under the Influence. It appears again in Audition, a series of five photographs in which young kids are asked to enact a first kiss. The idea for the work came from the last few minutes of Francois Truffaut's 1976 film L'Argent poche (Small change). Lockhart's staging of a series of kisses between Los Angeles school children exposes more than just our discomfort as viewers or voyeurs, but it also reveals the awkward, often painful pauses of real life in all and any mundane, everyday experience.

At the other end of the art-historical spectrum within which Lockhart's art is located, the 16mm-film Goshogaoka might by some be interpreted as revealing an interest in what has been defined as the 'post-human'. The movie is a magnificent, almost elegiac, though simple record of a group of young Japanese school children going through a series of exercises for their training in basketball. The floor of the gym is laid out with the lines of the court, while behind it red velvet drapes hang dramatically, hiding a stage. Clearly the gym serves a dual function - that of a playground and a more formal hall for school affairs. The movie begins with what sounds like a small army marching into the gym. In fact it is the young girls running in single file, like little soldiers on parade. Following the shouted orders of one of the members of the group, the girls exercise different parts of their bodies, display their speed, show off their expertise with the ball, enact defence and oppositional tactics and massage one another's bodies in a ritualistic manner before a formalised walk around the court, accompanied by chanting, as the film ends.

One is immediately conscious of the militaristic actions of the young girls, which automatically pulls ethnic clichés into the mind. There is a strenuous, energetic, determined force to the film, but it is tempered by the balletic, graceful, poetic movements that seem at odds with the precision of many of the exercises.

The film is shot from a single position and it is because of this that we begin to see the breakdown of what at first appears to be the robotic movements and uniformity reminiscent of the loss of individuality in all sections of military life, and hence the implied reference to the 'post-human', cyber-augmented culture. But as the film rolls we start noticing the individual styles of the young girls; the attempted precision that ends up in awkward mistakes and the culturally defined feminine gestures embedded in the masculine-oriented game. In sum, the symmetry, system and structure imposed both by the exercises and the directorial directives break apart before our eyes and we perceive something very different from our original expectations.

What we are left with after scrutinising the art of Sharon Lockhart is a liminal state, still not defined in our new culture. In the past this has been called 'humanism', now understood as a derogatory word to some. I find Lockhart's exploration of this area fascinating. For there is a fear in not being able to name something. Even Lockhart herself defers in interviews to talking about the systems she uses to create her work. Ultimately, though, the question is not how the work is created, nor how the work looks, but rather one could suggest that the works stem from acts of humanity; how the human gaze is directed towards the subject rather than away from the subject to be transformed into object.

Returning to the contextualising of Lockhart's work in terms of history and art history during the decade she has been producing it for public consumption, one might conclude, from much of the critical writing about her art, that mine is a deliberate misreading of her work. If this is so, I would like to suggest the following: history is not a spectator sport. There is not you and history. There is you in which history lives. And there is history in which you live. There is content and meaning in her work that has not fully been mined. If one is concerned about an issue, that produces history; if you are unconcerned, that too, produces history. There is no way that you can be ineffectual. You and I are the terms of history. Which is to say that history is the psyche writ large. It can't be something unimaginably beyond the power and scope of the individual when we make history every day with everything we say and do and dream. We are history. Our psyches are tumultuous. One does not solve one's nature, one lives it out. One struggles with it and for it and against it. One succumbs. One transcends. Sometimes both in a single breath. To be human: this is the key to Sharon Lockhart's art. The mysterious nature and power of her work lies in this simple, yet still incomprehensible idea.

— Rosetta Brooks