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10/6/2014

The Unreliable Narrator

waterside contemporary, London

waterside contemporary is pleased to present The Unreliable Narrator, an exhibition of new installation and video works by Karen Mirza and Brad Butler developed especially for the gallery.

narrator, n., nəˈreɪtə: The voice or persona (whether explicitly identified or merely implicit) by which are related the events in a plot [Oxford English Dictionary].

'You are the Prime Minister', a prominent neon work in the window of the gallery becomes an empowering invitation to take up the title role in a fantasy fiction. It is soon revealed to be misleading: the statement belongs to a larger piece from a scholarship exam for thirteen years-old boys entering Eton College, an elite school that trained 19 of the Britain’s Prime Ministers and 12 members of the current Government.

A video installation Terror Tapes narrates the 2008 Mumbai attacks, alternately from a position of the terrorists and of a seemingly impartial commentator. The video sourced from CCTV recordings of the siege, together with telephone conversations between the attackers and their controllers, suggest that the event was performed for the benefit of news cameras: “this is just a trailer, the main feature is yet to come”.

In the exhibition, Mirza and Butler expose the existence of an Unreliable Narrator who takes advantage of the gap between fiction and reality. We may imagine that in the street and at the gallery alike, we are tacitly comfortable with our own classic roles as actors and audiences. Making visible the self-propagating assemblies of circumstances, references and implications, the artists force a reconsideration of the mandate and power of the narrator, whether he, she or it is explicitly identified or merely implicit.

And so, in the Prime Minister’s Question, the thirteen year-old candidate is required to argue for the necessary and moral use of military force against civilian protesters, at his command. In Mumbai, the terrorists play into the hands of Bollywood filmmakers, who rush to register epic film titles even before the siege is lifted.
Stories slip between construction, rhetoric and reality with implausible ease: language itself appears to create and propagate the conditions of authority, violence, and division. As the Narrator continues to hijack the rhetoric of cultural and political discourse to rupture, Mirza and Butler expose the absurd ventriloquist act.

Karen Mirza and Brad Butler's multi-layered practice consists of filmmaking, drawing, installation, photography, performance, publishing and curating. Their work challenges terms such as participation, collaboration, the social turn and the traditional roles of the artist as producer and the audience as recipient.
Since 2009, Mirza and Butler have been developing a body of work entitled The Museum of Non Participation. The artists have repeatedly found themselves embedded in pivotal moments of change, protest, non-alignment and debate. Experiencing such spaces of contestation both directly and through the network of art institutions, Mirza and Butler negotiate these influences in video, photography, text and action.
Their recent solo presentations include The New Deal at Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, and The Guest of Citation at Performa 13, New York. Mirza and Butler have exhibited internationally, including at FACT, Liverpool, Centro de Arte Dos De Mayo, Madrid, La Capella, Barcelona, Arnolfini, Bristol, and Serpentine Gallery, London.
They are shortlisted for Artes Mundi 6, an international art prize recognising artistic practices that engage with the human condition, accompanied by an exhibition in Cardiff, Wales, in November 2014.

Private view Wednesday, 11 June 2014, 6-9pm

waterside contemporary
2 Clunbury Str London N1 6TT
Hours:
Wednesdays-Saturdays: 12-6pm
First Thursdays: 12-9pm
and by appointment.
info@waterside-contemporary.com
tel +44 20 3417 0159

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