PRESS RELEASE

Anne Hardy, Booth (2006), diasec mounted c-type print, 120cm x 150cm, courtesy the artist and Maureen Paley, London.

Palazzo Zenobio Fondamenta del Soccorso Dorsoduro 2596 Venice Italy

Open: 10 June - 1 July 2007
Opening times: Tuesday - Sunday 10.00 - 18.00
Exhibitors Day: 6 June 2007 10.00 - 18.00
Vernissage (Press & Preview Days): 7 - 9 June 2007 10.00 - 18.00
Press & Arts Professionals Reception: Thursday June 7 2007 15.00 – 16.00


Event Evening: Thursday 7 June 18.00 - 20.00
18.00 Ice Blink (an Antarctic essay) - Simon Faithfull Lecture/Performance
18.45 Book Launch - Arrivals>Art from the New Europe Modern Art Oxford and Turner Contemporary
19.20 Marcus Coates: Dawn Chorus Film screening and reception hosted by: Picture This and
Bristol Visual Arts Consortium

ArtSway announces the work to be exhibited at New Forest Pavilion during the 52nd International Art Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia. Simon Faithfull, Melanie Manchot, Beate Gütschow, Anne Hardy and Igloo have all been artist in residence at ArtSway over the last ten years, and Stanza was selected by SCAN, hosted at ArtSway.  The exhibition draws together several explorations of transformation an d change as temporal processes.  

Simon Faithfull’s three video works centre on the transformative nature of journeys, flickering between monotony and transcendence. Faithfull shines a light onto the mundane which renders it other-worldly, brimming with significance in Orbital No. 1 (2002): a video projection in three concentric circles documenting seemingly infinite journeys around the circle line on the London Underground, the North and South Circulars and the M25. ‘44’ (2005), was filmed through a porthole on Faithfull’s ACE Fellowship on the British Antarctic Survey; the slow-burn tedium of long journeys is interspersed with subtle changes and glimmers of ice light. For 30km (2004), Faithfull attached a video camera to a weather balloon, sending it to the edge of space, drawing attention to human aspirations and ambitions to be untied from the gravity that keeps us fixed to the corporeal.

In Melanie Manchot’s most recent video installation Shave (2007) a camera slowly circles around a seated man who has all of his body hair removed by a barber in a painstakingly gradual and ritualistic process of transformation. On a separate monitor, running in perfect sync, the image of a bowl, at first full of clean water, gradually fills with foam and hair as the shaving proceeds. In order to keep the structural unity of the performative process intact, the video is shown uncut, as a continuous 75 minute tracking shot. In this subtle and intimate act of transformation, the barber and his subject exchange silent gestures and the work gradually takes on sculptural qualities.

Beate Gütschow’s video diptych, R#1 – R#2 (2007) refers to Jacob van Ruisdael’s Jewish Cemetery paintings (1654, 1655). In response to these paintings Gütschow located the actual cemetery, and filmed footage of the three tombs, which remain to this day. Filming in the New Forest during her residency at ArtSway in 2006, she then sourced individual features of the landscape similar to those found in Ruisdael’s paintings to recreate a close approximation of The Jewish Cemetery paintings. Each video is a montage of 10 - 15 individual films, digitally pasted to create a single image. The results are eerie, melancholic video works that reference the original paintings via the unflinching gaze of the video camera lens.

Anne Hardy will exhibit three large scale photographs. These psychologically charged spaces, intended to bring on feelings of both familiarity and unease, explore the human modification of interiors, pointing to the psychological states of their inhabitants and to the real or imagined events that might have taken place within them, and are constructed in front of the camera within the artists studio over a period of 2-3 months. Close Range (2006) positions us in a narrow black room, the results of target practice on the wall in front. Ammunition and cigarette stubs are scattered around, signalling obsessive behaviour and aggression or maybe just boredom. In Booth (2006) numbered telephones in grubby alcoves, surrounded by phone-box ads and video tapes are sumptuously lit and coloured in contrast to the surroundings, creating an air of seduction. In Untitled IV (Balloons) (2005), a dark cellar room filled with balloons and streamers suggests a party, although the detritus, chalk coded diagrams and piles of cigarettes, imply a more sinister celebration.

Igloo’s Summerbranch (2006) is an exhibition of intermedia works which explore movement and stillness in nature. By means of camouflage and other disguises Summerbranch considers ways in which a person can blend into a ‘natural’ environment represented by the moving image. Igloo’s Summerbranch installation uses the tools of the military-entertainment complex: computer gaming, motion capture, 3D environments and special effects to question what is truth and artifice in our attempts to reproduce nature.

Stanza works with digital code as a physical material with which to craft interactive ‘paintings’, exhibiting a pair of interactive touch-screen works as part of New Forest Pavilion. Biocities (2003) uses a flooding aesthetic, swamping the screen and transforming the cartography of the image as if a breathing city changes its terrain. Inner City (2002) uses a stamping and collaging aesthetic, referencing the disconnected and fragmentary experience of urban life. Stanza was selected for exhibition in New Forest Pavilion by SCAN, which is hosted at ArtSway.

A full colour catalogue accompanies the exhibition with the following contributions: Martin Coomer on Simon Faithfull, Anna-Catharina Gebbers on Beate Gütschow, John Slyce on Anne Hardy, David Thorp on Melanie Manchot, Colm Lally and Cecilia Wee on igloo, and Charlotte Frost on Stanza.

New Forest Pavilion – Local (26 May - 15 June at ArtSway) is a companion exhibition of alternative works from the Venice artists, and, along with ArtSway+10, comprises part of ArtSway’s 10th Anniversary celebrations. - ends -

For more information, interviews, images, please contact :

Laura McLean-Ferris on +44 (0)7990 975232, +44 (0)1590 682260 x 16

email laura@artsway.org.uk or view the press pages on the ArtSway website

For ArtSway Director Mark Segal call +44  (0)7976 267978

 

Exhibition-related events:
text + work seminars: word matters

Word Matters will provide a platform for curators, practitioners, writers, and audiences to
question and explore the relation between the written word and contemporary art.

Tuesday 12 June 2007, 6.30pm - 9pm
Word Matters: Spinning a Line
Speakers: David Bate, Jim Hunter, Stephanie James, Laura McLean-Ferris, Lee Triming.

Tuesday 26 June 2007, 6.30pm – 9.00pm
Word Matters: Crafting a Visual Language
Speakers: Jim Hunter, Stephanie James, Prof Simon Olding.

For further information or to book a place, please contact Josepha Sanna on +44 (0) 7711 327 987

or jsanna@aib.ac.uk

Notes for editors

ArtSway’s New Forest Pavilion is funded by Arts Council England; delivered in partnership with the Arts Institute at Bournemouth (with additional funding from the Arts & Humanities Research Council) and SCAN; with additional support from Hampshire County Council and sponsored by Hallett Independent.

 

Simon Faithfull: www.simonfaithfull.org
Anne Hardy: www.maureenpaley.co.uk
Igloo: www.igloo.org.uk
Beate Gütschow: www.barbaragross.de
Melanie Manchot: www.fred-london.com
Stanza: www.stanza.co.uk

ArtSway, Station Road, Sway, nr. Lymington,
Hampshire, England, SO41 6BA
Tel: +44 (0)1590 682260
Web: www.artsway.org.uk
Email: mail@artsway.org.uk