Relative to the ubiquity of repeated and recontextualised imagery in contemporary art, appropriation maintains a limited presence in its critical discourses. Through an analysis of Annie MacDonell’s 2012 film 'Originality and Repetition,' this Major Research Paper engages appropriation as an approach to considering how we look at images in the 21st-century. 'Originality and Repetition' takes up repetition and appropriation, in the context of their prevalence, to thematize and enact what I argue are three distinct modes of looking. I refer to these modes as exhausted looking, looking in excess and looking simultaneously, and situate each within a contemporary visual culture animated by images that are reproduced quickly, shift in orientation to the world, and recall the existence of multiple time frames at once. Together they express the practical and theoretical relevance of appropriation to exploring spectatorship today.