1993

24 Hour Psycho is one of Gordon’s most famous works, last shown in Scotland at Glasgow's Tramway in 1993. Gordon has slowed down Hitchcock’s film so that it takes 24 hours to view. Psycho is a film that we all know – or think we know – so our memory of what happens is constantly getting in the way of what we are actually seeing. Ours minds are constantly moving forwards and backwards between a remembered version of the events coming up in the film, and an agonisingly and unnaturally slow-moving present.

• © Douglas Gordon

1993

By slowing down the movie projection almost to a halt and removing the narrative, Gordon reveals stories that were previously hidden and adds new dimension to the original film. Will you be lucky enough to visit the show during the legendary shower scene?

• © Douglas Gordon

1999

Feature Film, a video projection of 1999, present’s Bernard Herrmann’s musical score for Hitchcock’s film Vertigo. We hear the wonderfully evocative music, but all we see are the hands, arms and head of the man conducting the orchestra. Again memory plays tricks on us. So well known is the film and so evocative of its plot, that in our mind’s eye we seem to be transported into what is going on.

The concept of the work is based on the insight that a major impact of Hitchcock’s work lies in the use of music.

• © Douglas Gordon

2002

Mirror Blind Greta is part of the series 100 Blind Stars which addresses the cult of the celebrity. The series consists of 100 publicity stills of ‘40s and ‘50s icons from Cary Grant and Kim Novak to Bette Davis and Elizabeth Taylor. The eyes have been cut out of each photo and replaced with a mirrored surface or black or white paper.

The resulting images are eerie. At first glance you recognise the person in the image as they are so familiar. However, the missing eyes suggest there is nothing more behind the image, the portrait is simply a mask, upon which we project our own desires.

• © Douglas Gordon. Photograph by Robert McKeever. Courtesy of the Gagosian Gallery

2003

This film, shown on two screens and one or two television monitors, shows an elephant acting out an old circus trick: playing dead. The two screens are virtually the full size of the elephant. The films on the screens show the elephant playing dead and slowly getting up and moving around, but one camera moves clockwise around the animal, the other anti-clockwise. The film shown on the monitors moves more freely and concentrates on the elephant’s eye.

• © Douglas Gordon

2003

A close-up of the elephant's eye.

• © Douglas Gordon

1996

The simple power of Gordon’s work is evident in 30 Seconds Text, a room installation of 1996. This consists of a single hanging light bulb that goes on in a previously pitch-black room. The bulb illuminates a text printed on one of the walls, which describes an experiment carried out in Montpellier in 1905 to see how long a man retains consciousness after his head has been severed by the guillotine. Apparently, it takes 30 seconds. It also takes 30 seconds to read the whole text. After this time has elapsed, the light goes out and we are plunged back into darkness.

• © Douglas Gordon

1992 -

This work is the first in the exhibition - a retrospective in itself, featuring every film and video work Gordon has made from 1992 until now. Including works such as Film Noir (Fly), Fuzzy Logic; B Movie and A Divided Self I & II, 1996, this piece is shown on a bank of 50 TV monitors in the RSA's Sculpture Hall.

• © Douglas Gordon

This work consists of two monitors showing two arms wrestling with each other, one hairy and the other smooth. At first glance it looks as though two people are wrestling with one another but as you watch it becomes clear that the two arms belong to the same person. The battle between the two arms suggests an internal battle, the good self represented by the smooth arm and the evil self by the hairy arm.

• © Douglas Gordon

2006

Made during a football match between Real Madrid and Villarreal in the Estatio Santiago Benabeu in Madrid, the film follows Zidane from start to (almost) finish.

Seventeen synchronised film cameras, using different types of film and in various positions around the stadium, were trained on Zidane. The footage was cut to create a 90 minute film of only Zidane. The film was inspired by portraits by Velázquez and Goya which hang in the Prado and Andy Warhol’s real-time film portraits. The film offers an insight into the characteristics and idiosyncrasies of one of the greatest footballers of all time. The gallery version of the film, recently acquired by the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, will be given its world premiere towards the end of the exhibition.

• © Douglas Gordon