From Left to Night is an experimental film production through which a number of seemingly unconnected players, places, events, subjects and histories, drawn from The Showroom's neighbourhood, meet.
In 2014 Wendelien van Oldenborgh began a working conversation with The Showroom's Communal Knowledge programme with the intention of developing research and relations towards the production of a new film.
Van Oldenborgh's year-long engagement with The Showroom’s local area has been looking at what issues are at stake here, finding common ground, building relationships and discovering ways of working together. In particular, a music video project initiated by van Oldenborgh and local hip hop artist Reveal, became an important step towards cementing relationships with some of the players in this film From Left to Night .
From Left to Night is an experimental film production through which a number of seemingly unconnected players, places, events, subjects and histories, drawn from The Showroom's neighbourhood, meet. It involves five people, three locations, and the different subjects and forms of knowledge that they bring with them.
These range from urban tensions – such as unresolved histories of the 2011 London riots – to new feminist and racial theories, music videos, 1960s idealist architecture and the personal ways in which each of the protagonists relate to these. Material gathered in a concentrated two-day shoot will be brought together in a film installation specially conceived for The Showroom.
Through carefully orchestrated scenarios van Oldenborgh creates situations where these elements collide and trigger new articulations and sparks of logic; generating the ‘script’ with the full involvement of the players, as filming unfolds.
As with the artist’s previous works, the film explores social dynamics and behaviours, the governing systems and architectures which provoke and reinforce these, and the voice and language of the individual amidst them. In so doing van Oldenborgh reveals a reality often hidden from view in the public realm, in an attempt to understand familiar stories in a new way.
Wendelien is based in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. She has recently been awarded the prestigious Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for Art. Wendelien has participated in; Confessions of the Imperfect 1848 – 1989 – today at the Van Abbe Museum 2014, Venice Biennial 2011, 4rth Moscow Biennial 2011, the 29e Bienal de Sao Paulo 2010, the 11th Istanbul Biennial 2009 and Berlinale Forum Expanded 2011 and 2013. She has exhibited widely, including at the Generali Foundation, Vienna, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Museum Sztuki , Lodz, Tranzitdisplay, Prague, Van Abbemusem, Eindhoven, Casco, Utrecht, Muhka Antwerp.
This new commission forms part of How to work together, a shared programme of contemporary art commissioning and research devised by The Showroom, Studio Voltaire and Chisenhale Gallery.
How to work together is supported by a capacity building and match funding grant from Arts Council England through Catalyst Arts, with additional funding in the second year from Bloomberg, Jerwood Charitable Foundation and the How to work together Artist Commissions Production Fund.
Wendelien van Oldenborgh’s commission has received additional support from The Mondriaan Fund and The Embassy of the Netherlands.
Image: Installation at Wilfried Lentz Rotterdam. Photographs by Wendelien van Oldenborgh
Courtesy Wilfried Lentz Rotterdam and the artist.
Press Contact:
Charlotte Nourse, charlotte@theshowroom.org, 020 7724 4300
Opening: 28 April, 6.30-8.30pm
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63, Penfold Street
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