For nearly a decade, Shaun Irons and Lauren Petty have been seeking evocative and poetic combinations of video, film, audio and performance to create multiple-channel installations as well as single-channel pieces. They have created eight multiple-channel video/sound installations, numerous single channel works (including a feature-length documentary), as well as interactive video scores to accompany live dance, theater, music and performance. They have also created multiple series of archival digital prints culled from their moving image work.

Shaun and Lauren's work has been exhibited in diverse locations in New York and internationally including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Brooklyn Museum, The Chelsea Art Museum, Ocularis @ Galapagos, the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Havana, Cuba, and was screened on PBS's Reel New York. Recently, their work was shown at the Diversions Film Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland, an exhibition at the Friedrich Petzel Gallery in New York and was featured in the Sadho Film Festival in New Delhi, India. In 2007, they exhibited a new video/sound installation at 3rd Ward, Brooklyn and exhibited a variety of works at the Tokyo Wonder Site in Japan. In 2008, they were commissioned by the Brooklyn Arts Council to make a new multimedia installation project that was exhibited as a solo gallery show in D.U.M.B.O. Most recently, they completed a new installation project called Revolving Twilight, which debuted as a large-scale in-progress media installation at the Chocolate Factory in New York. Upcoming, they are creating a video installation for Avant-Garde-Arama at PS122, curated by The Wooster Group as well as a new multiple-channel video project for the gallery space at HERE Arts Center.

Throughout their careers they have received numerous awards in support of their work including two New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships in Video (2002, 2006), grants from the Jerome Foundation (2004, 2006), The Greenwall Foundation (2004, 2006, 2009), The New York State Council on the Arts (2005, 2006, 2009), The Experimental Television Center (2006, 2008), The Asian Cultural Council (2006) and the National Endowment for the Arts (2005). They have received residency fellowships from The MacDowell Colony (2007) and Yaddo (2006, 2008) and were visiting artists at the Tokyo Wonder Site, Japan (2007).

Shaun and Lauren have also actively collaborated with theater and dance companies, designing interactive video to accompany live performance. They worked on The Wooster Group’s Hamlet, contributing images and ideas to the video score, which has played at St. Ann's Warehouse (2007), The Public Theater (2007) and numerous international venues including the Pompidou Center, Paris (2006). They also created video for Lenora Champagne's play Traces/Fades, seen at Three Legged Dog (2006) and at the Ice Factory Festival (2008). They designed video for choreographer Francesca Harper for performances at the Holland Dance Festival (2007), Harlem Stage (2008) and a large-scale video piece for the Venice Biennale (2008). In addition, in 2008, they created a video score for 00:07, a play by theater artist Yehuda Duenyas based on Malcolm Gladwell's book Blink. Currently, they are designing video for Ex.P Girl's Paris Syndrome which will debut at HERE Theater in summer 2010.

artist statement