INTERFACE

REVIEW

The Invention of Solitude (2)

City Gallery Offsite Projects, Leicester, 1 September – 28 October

Reviewed by: Bianca Winter »

One the face of it, artists need not invent solitude: for many creative practitioners, it is an inherent part of making, caused by that narrowing of concentration from the wide world to the idea and its manifestation. But this is not the only reason that the title of this exhibition is intriguing; it throws an interesting perspective on what is not only a group show, but also a collaboration.

Within Solitude (2) artists Rebecca Birch, Alex Hudson, Matthew Lutz-Kinoy and Rob Smith exhibit work that is based on an exhibition by Charles Danby, The Invention of Solitude, which took place at the Nunnery, London, in October/November 2006. This second leg of the exhibition is dubbed an offsite project by City Gallery, inhabiting a space in the gallery as well as spaces in the city of Leicester and on the World Wide Web.

The exhibition, in all its extended manifestations, seems to attempt to make the viewer very aware of themselves, not least of all by assuming a certain level of knowledge. The content of the sophisticated attendant publication suggests a subtle collaboration, belied by the clumsiness of some of the work, though supported through the web presence of the exhibition, Transmission.

Transmission neither replaces nor extends the work on display, serving as a point of departure as it juxtaposes four screens representing the four artists: it helps the viewer become an enquirer, questioning the liveness and the purpose of the presentation. In the case of Alex Hudson, his paintings, featuring insipid palette and brushwork, are highlighted as objects of gaze. A camera is turned on one of the four paintings hanging in the gallery, with a screen showing video footage of the camera’s view projected within the same room. The potential for a viewer to view themselves viewing is presented and subsequently removed on the realisation that this is not a live recording. Nonetheless aware of being filmed, many viewers turn their gazing into some sort of performance, and yet even those that don’t are likely to feel the impact that the camera has on the way they view the paintings.

Rebecca Birch maintains a level of reflexivity by presenting a stream of videos from YouTube in which countless people cover Johnny Cash’s ‘Walk the Line’. Our viewing of these musical offerings is mediated not just through recording and transmission, but also by the appropriation of this material from YouTube to Transmission. Normally engaging with web-published videos in the privacy of our own homes, this re-presentation serves again to make us aware of our position as receivers. This also highlights the somewhat solitary plight of the person transmitting their material: Its reception can be indicated by statistics and possibly mediated feedback, but as the content can easily be freely altered and distributed, this material may lead to a life beyond the imagining of its maker.

Whilst The Invention of Solitude (2) provides many prompts for further research and engagement, this does not prevent the somewhat inward-looking work leaving the viewer feeling they are missing something. The seeming dependence of the work on both the publication and the web presence prompt the viewer to move from a situation of public experience to private consumption, thus potentially (and perhaps appropriately) elucidating feelings of isolation.

www.inventionofsolitude.org

Writer detail:
Producer and fine art graduate based in the East Midlands.

bianca.weasel@gmail.com| www.bianca.org.uk

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