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18/1/2012

Daria Martin

MK Gallery, Milton Keynes

Daria Martin’s first survey, solo exhibition in a UK public gallery presents a selection of short 16mm films made over the last 10 years, including the premier of an ambitious new work, Sensorium Tests. Throughout this period, Martin has pursued a sustained enquiry into numerous pressing issues relating to film, art and culture, including enchantment, voyeurs and artificial intelligence.

The exhibition includes the following films: Closeup Gallery (2003), in which a magician and his assistant engage in a strange game where cards dance, as if dramatising an inner world; Soft Materials (2004) where intimate relationships between man and machine are nurtured in an artificial intelligence laboratory; Harpstrings and Lava (2007) a dark narrative that animates dream images through clashing textures and structures; and the new film Sensorium Tests (2012), which revolves around a recently recognised neurological condition called ‘mirror-touch synaesthesia’.

People affected with mirror touch synaesthesia experience a heightened empathy, whereby visually observed touch applied on the bodies of others triggers the perception of a similar touch in their own bodies. Using staged scenarios based on a real life experiment into this condition, the film explores how sensations might be created and shared between people and objects.

Encountering art has always produced varying degrees of engagement and interaction, whether triggering personal memories, associations or feelings, or more recently in literal, physical responses to immersive, participatory installations. In some ways, Martin’s work turns these distinctions on their head, using mirror-touch synaesthesia to render virtual or remote activities indistinguishable from literal actions.

Martin’s work often raises questions about what it means to be ‘touched’ by cinema and alternates playfully between luring the viewer through sensuous images and lush archetypes, and pushing them back into an awareness of artifice. This intentionally crafted push and pull, Martin says, is a reflection of the essential contradictions of the medium of film: its ephemerality and sensuality together with a physical realisation of fantasy.

Combining elements of painting, sculpture, performance art, dance, music and science, Martin’s films re-enact on a modest basis the historical ideal of the ‘gesamtkunstwerk’ or total artwork in order to create new frictions. Her casts frequently include musicians, choreographers and actors, and practitioners of professions or members of subcultures not normally placed before the camera. Sensorium Tests’ cast comprises the Romanian actress Anamaria Marinca as well as several non-actors, including the synaesthete James Wannterton, who ‘tastes words’.

The exhibition design has been produced by London-based architects and designers Melissa Appleton and Matthew Butcher from Post Works, while the accompanying publication has been designed by APFEL – A Practice for Every Day Life.

Daria Martin was born in San Francisco in 1973 and studied Humanities at Yale and received her M.F.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2000. Martin has been based in London since 2002, and has had solo exhibitions at venues including the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2006), Kunstverein in Hamburg, Kunsthalle Zurich (both 2005), Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2009) which toured to the New Museum, New York and the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. Recent group shows include Move: Art and Dance Since the Sixties, shown at the Hayward Gallery in 2010 and toured to Munich and Dusseldorf, 2011, and Animism, presented by the Generali Foundation, Vienna, 2011. Martin has also exhibited her films in venues such as the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and Tate Modern, London. Her work is currently on view at the Pompidou in Paris in Danser Sa Vie and a solo show opens at Galleria Raffaella Cortese, Milan on 15 December 2011. She has been a senior lecturer at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art at University of Oxford since 2006.

Publication: Sensorium Tests / £19
Texts by Melissa Gronlund, and Daria Martin, with postface by Anthony Spira. Softback,150 pages, 95 colour and 35 monochrome illustrations. Size, 205 x 280mm (portrait). ISBN 978-3-03764-272-6. Available from MK Gallery Shop from 19 January.

Post Works
Post-Works is a collaboration between Melissa Appleton and Matthew Butcher. Their work combines built structures and installations, with performances and film; recent projects have been seen at the ICA and Royal Academy of Arts, London.
www.post-works.com

Apfel
A Practice for Everyday Life is a London design agency working with some of the world's leading brands, companies, institutions and individuals and who frequently collaborate with architects and curators. Clients include the Hayward Gallery, ICA Boston, Tate Modern & Britain, Turner Prize and the Victoria & Albert Museum
www.apracticeforeverydaylife.com

Supporters
The exhibition has been supported by The Stanley Thomas Johnson Foundation. www.johnstonstiftung.ch. The film Sensorium Tests has been supported by an arts award from The Wellcome Trust. www.wellcome.ac.uk.

MK Gallery Supporters
MK Gallery receives core funding from Milton Keynes Council and Arts Council England South East.

Image: Sensorium Tests. 16mm film, 2012.

Press information
For press interviews, information or images please contact: Katharine Sorensen, Communications Director, MK Gallery.
T: +44 (0)1908 558318 / E: ksorensen@mkgallery.org

Friday 20 January h 6.30pm
Rear Window
1954 / 112 mins / Cert. PG
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Selected by exhibitor Daria Martin
£5 (concessions £3)
Pre-book on 01908 676 900

Exhibition Opening Thursday 19 January 2012 / 6-10pm / All welcome
7pm - Speeches and welcome
8pm - Music and refreshments

Milton Keynes, MK Gallery
900 Midsummer Boulevard, Central Milton Keynes, MK9 3QA.
Opening Hours
Tuesday - Friday 12 noon - 8pm
Saturday 11am - 8pm
Sunday 11am - 5pm
Closed Mondays including Bank Holidays
Admission Free

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