Peepshow
Project Space 11, Plymouth City Market
Wednesday 6th October 2010 – Saturday 23rd October 2010
Investigating the manipulation of the act of viewing, Peepshow will deny the public access to Project Space 11 with the intention of arousing curiosity of what lies within it. Presenting a ‘peephole’ well above eye-level, viewers will have to climb a small set of steps outside the space’s shutter to view the work.
This act of looking will position the viewer raised on a platform, highly visible to the other market users. However, with only one person being able to view the work at a time, this highly public scenario will also be a potentially private and intimate one.
Behind the shutter is screened #02_ a DVD project, a series of films by artists and writers from the Subjectivity and Feminisms research group at Chelsea College of Art and Design. The Subjectivity & Feminisms research group consists of artists and writers whose practices explore questions and issues of identity as they are mediated between artist/writer, artwork and viewer.
The DVD project exemplifies their work as artists/writers and addresses the group’s thematic: to explore in art practice how and whether concepts of subjectivity and identity are transitive, fluid and processual. Each short film segues into the next, generating connections and differences between work which addresses how identities are performed through moving images.
Participating artists include Gill Addison, Hayley Newman/Katherine Araniello, Lucy Gunning, Jo Bruton, Brian Dawn Chalkley, Edwina Ashton, Abigail Reynolds, Sarah Smith, Melanie Jackson, sissu tarka, Mo Throp, and Maria Walsh.
The viewing construct of Peepshow connotes ideas pertinent to work that deals with identity and gender. The unusual and restricted means of viewing makes reference to voyeurism (Hitchcockian motifs, ʻrubberneckingʼ, and Soho peepshows all come to mind), and also addresses the gender politics that are signified by the peephole (for example Bergerʼs notion of ʻthe gazeʼ).
By negotiating with the shutter the viewer enters a relationship with these ideas, however unexpected or unwilling this dialogue may be, reinforcing the dichotomy created by the situation presented.
For more details of the Subjectivity and Feminisms research group please visit www.subjectivityandfeminisms.org.uk
For more details of Project Space 11 please visit www.e-leven.co.uk
