Public Display is a new series of specially commissioned videos from UK-based artists commenting and reflecting on the ubiquity, authority and place of moving images in everyday life. Public Display includes new work by Sebastian Buerkner, Claire Hooper, Claire Hope, Matthew Noel-Tod, Laure Prouvost, Rachel Reupke, Mayling To, Mark Aerial Waller, Stina Wirfelt and Katy Woods
The videos are conceived for exhibition in public spaces such as outdoor screens and the programme is available to hire from LUX (please contact LUX distribution for more information). Public Display was made possible by support from i/o/lab, Norway as part of their Public Screens series.
Public Display will be exhibited on i/o/lab's Public Screens series in Stravanger, Norway until 8th August 2011 http://www.publicscreens.no
Sebastian Buerkner
Door Beard Bacon Pinch
In “Door Beard Bacon Pinch” sound and image are revealed out of synch. Like a key, the misplacements very simple structure demands an initial investment of a viewer in order to be invited into the intimacy of the narrative. The layered stream of delay and foretelling forces the beholder into a subjective present and spawns passing offspring of its reality. An animated refection of that imagined viewer will eventually turn into an additional protagonist of this conundrum.
Sebastian Buerkner (born 1975 in Germany, lives and works in London) completed an MA at Chelsea College of Art & Design in 2002. From 2004 his art practice has shifted exclusively to digital animation ranging from films, film performance to multi-channel installations. He has recently had solo exhibitions at Tramway in Glasgow, the Whitechapel Project Space, Kunstverein Wiesbaden, The Showroom, London and at Sketch, London.
Claire Hooper
Dans le Boudoir
An elegant young man in a dress shirt and braces engages in a private ritual in the bathroom.
Claire Hooper, born 1978 London, has shown widely in Europe and abroad Including recent and forthcoming shows at Lothringer 13, Munich; MUMOK, Vienna; Sketch, London; IT Park Taipei; Kunstwerke, Berlin; and at various events organised by the Serpentine and Whitechapel galleries in London. She is represented by Hollybush Gardens London and was the 2010 winner of the Baloise Art Prize at Statements, Art Basel.
Claire Hope
Values, Efficiency and Commitment
A man speaks a series of statements looking out of the screen at the viewers. He provides personal information about himself, which he hopes will maintain his imagined partner, friend’s or your interest. Caught between the vulnerability of self-promotion and the affirmation of a relationship, his statements reflect the central messages of informative advertising such as his principles, achievements and ambitions for the future. However, the man’s approach is enigmatic and his location seems too personal, the video also possessing an indeterminate and incidental aesthetic; this screen is potentially taking you somewhere you don’t want to go.
Born in the UK (1977), Claire graduated with an MA Fine Art from Chelsea College of Art in 2004. Her video and performance projects choreograph critical responses to contemporary experience. Claire was a LUX Associate Artist in 2007/8 and has exhibited with transmediale festival, tank.tv online gallery, S1/Salon 09, Mains D'Oeuvres Arts Centre, Paris, Urban Research and Director’s Lounge Berlin among other opportunities.
Matthew Noel-Tod
End and Up
Rapid montage of fashion models photographs sideways up.
Matthew Noel-Tod (born UK 1978) lives and works in London. Matthew Noel-Tod studied film and fine art at The Slade School of Fine Art, Norwich School of Art and Design and Goldsmiths, University of London. He is Senior Lecturer in Moving Image at University of Brighton. Recent exhibitions include, A Skvader, Norwich Castle Museum (with Outpost Gallery), Norwich, End Again Week (Pop-Up!) at The Two Jonnys’ Project Space, London (2009), Blind Carbon Copy (2008) at Picture This, Bristol and Nought to Sixty, ICA, London; Obcy Aktorzy / Foreign Actors (2006)at Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw, Whitechapel Project Space, London and Cambridge Film Festival, and Nausea (2005) at London Film Festival, EMAF,Osnabrück and Rotterdam Film Festival. Recent group exhibitions include, This Is Not a Photo Show at Blue Star Contemporary Art Center and Unit B (Gallery), San Antonio (2010) and Remote Viewing at Arts Santa Monica, Barcelona and Pacific Design Centre, LosAngeles (2010).
Laure Prouvost
Don't Look
Playing with the authority and pervasiveness of signage and instruction in everyday life.
Laure Prouvost (born 1978 Lille France) is an artist and filmmaker who lives and works in London, England. She graduated from Central St Martins College of Arts in 2002 and her MFA at Goldsmith College. In 2009 she completed the LUX Associate Artists Programme. Her work, includes painting, video, sound and site-specific works has exhibited extensively. She won the EAST International Award 2009 in Norwich UK. Her videos are distributed by LUX and she is represented by MOT international.
Rachel Reupke
Couple
A single image is the starting point for this video: an old hand painted advert for a café I saw in Lisbon last summer. A couple, drawn in silhouette, are drinking champagne, their table illuminated by a candelabra. The man has a normal masculine profile, while the woman is stylised with button nose and enlarged forehead. I'm intrigued by this cross-species union, the gothic art direction and the psychological distance of the couple, united and aloof.
Rachel Reupke’s (1971, England) recent videos focus on some universal concerns. Happiness, health and social status are examined through the language of commercial image production, where these personal, yet highly marketable obsessions, are uncovered and exploited with differing degrees of visibility.
Mayling To
Untitled (work in progress)
Mayling To’s work engages primarily with personal narratives exploring individual and collective experience that negotiates subjects of memory, history, and place. To’s video follows on from The Land Behind (2007); her father’s narrative of his childhood memories of the Pearl River Delta in Guangzhou, Southern China recounted against the region’s recent developing landscape as a major manufacturing base where fishing villages have given way to rapid industrialisation. Returning to the Pearl River Delta, often known as the ‘factory to the world’, a small electronics factory in nearby Dongguan is in decline and faces imminent closure. The video documents microscopic observations and sounds of half-empty factory floors at work.
Mayling To is a London based artist. She studied at Goldsmiths College receiving an MA in Fine Art in 2001. To has exhibited in numerous exhibitions and screenings internationally including the 3rd Guangzhou Triennial (2008), and Portable Cinema Project, The Arcades Project, Cardiff (2008). In 2007 To was selected for the LUX Associate Artists Programme culminating in the moving image project The Politics in the Room (2009).
Mark Aerial Waller
State Subject – 2010-6-19 16:13:32 – 16:16:32
Four cameras record CCTV footage of a man striking poses from Auguste Rodin’s La Porte d’Enfer astride an office chair and table. A woman studies the male figure and writes notes, starting a new sheet for each pose. This original performance of State Subject was held at LISTE, Art Basel, Switzerland in 2010.
Mark Aerial Waller (b. 1969, High Wycombe, UK produces interdisciplinary, cinematic time travelogues that refute any predictable balance between our romance for the ancient past and our fetish for a streamlined future. Waller defies conventional screening formats, integrating sculptural objects and live performances for an experience defined in spatial and situational terms. He is also the founder of The Wayward Cannon, a platform for event-based interventions in cinematic practices. Recent solo exhibitions and performance include 0-60 ICA (2008), La Societe des Amis de Judex, Tate Modern (2008) and group exhibitions include Kadist Foundation, Paris (2009), 2nd Athens Biennale(2009) and Museo D’Arte Contemporanea Donnaregina, Naples, Italy(2007) .
Stina Wirfelt
The Entrance
The video consists of a continuous shot and a fictional narrative that is read out by a voice-over. The footage of a hole in a windowpane is used to demonstrate the displacement that always occurs when watching pre-recorded media. By addressing the viewer directly, it draws attention to his or her expectations and how the image is read and understood by preconceptions. Ultimately, the video attempts to make the viewer aware of the social context in which they are watching it. Read by Heather Lander, sound recording and mix by EMIT
Stina Wirfelt grew up in Sweden, where she graduated from Malmö Art Academy in 2007. She currently lives and works in Glasgow, Scotland. During 2009 she participated in LUX Associate Artist Program. Recent exhibitions and screenings include Embassy Gallery, Edinburgh, Transmission Gallery, Glasgow, Rotterdam IFF and IndieLisboa.
Katy Woods
Academy for Gifted Boys
Katy Woods’ work uses obsolescence, the outmoded and the defunct as devices to create and produce video projects, working with found and filmed video material, text, sound and still image. Academy for Gifted Boys is a promotional film for an imaginary conservatoire for young male classical musicians. Preparing for a lifelong career playing violin, piano or cello, boys can study here for a future steeped in brilliance and admiration. Undistracted and diligent, hardworking and focused, the professional performing career begins immediately, and so does the pressure. Academy for Gifted Boys is constructed from found footage and contemplates talent,promise and being singled out at a young age.
Katy Woods (born Wigan, 1975. Lives and works in Birmingham, UK). She graduated from her MA Fine Art at Sheffield Hallam University in 2006, recent exhibitions and screenings include Exploratory Laboratory Big Picture Projects, Dorset, The Incredible 10 FriedrichstadtZentral, Dresden, Germany, Verwertung Stattbad Wedding, Berlin, Germany, Past Perfect Onion City Experimental Film & Video Festival, Chicago, USA and These Valued Landscapes Oriel Davies Gallery, South Wales.
