Aaron Williamson
dal 18/4/2005 al 29/5/2005
Segnalato da
18/4/2005
Aaron Williamson
The Showroom (old venue), London
Wild Boy, a new performance installation. The artist will inhabit the Gallery for six weeks to enact the figure of Victor of Aveyron, a child found to be living in the wild in southern France at the end of the eighteenth century. At the height of the Age of Enlightenment, the discovery and subsequent failed attempt to 'civilise' Victor was a strong challenge to attempts to differentiate 'man' from animal, and debates about the role of civilisation and rational thought. Williamson considers the enigmatic figure of Victor and what his legacy to deaf people and culture might be.
Wild Boy
The Showroom is pleased to announce that it has commissioned Aaron
Williamson to make a new performance installation, Wild Boy. This will be
his first solo show in London.
In Wild Boy Aaron Williamson will inhabit the Gallery for a period of six
weeks to enact the figure of Victor of Aveyron, a child found to be living
in the wild in southern France at the end of the eighteenth century.
Twelve-year old Victor was the subject of an early attempt at experimental
psychology. At the height of the Age of Enlightenment, the discovery and
subsequent failed attempt to ‘civilise’ Victor was a strong challenge to
attempts to differentiate ‘man’ from animal, and debates about the role of
civilisation and rational thought. More recently, as the subject of Francois
Truffaut’s film, L’Enfant Sauvage (1969), Victor was portrayed as a heroic
rejecter of civilisation, a romantic ideal regaining currency during the
1960s counter-culture.
Aaron Williamson’s Wild Boy considers the enigmatic figure of Victor and
what his legacy to deaf people and culture might be? Wild children have
traditionally been found to be blind or deaf (Victor was thought to be deaf
but in fact, inside the forest’s silence, he had lost interest in most
sounds) and Williamson seizes upon this fact in order to make comment on his
own experience of becoming profoundly deaf over the course of twenty years.
In a world in which physical perfection becomes more and more of an ideal,
and a future in which further biomedical intervention into the creation of
this physical ideal is possible, Williamson makes a powerful comment on the
history and importance of difference.
Aaron Williamson’s approach as an artist is formed around a desire to
deconstruct the behavioural norms and orthodoxies of society. Through often
purposefully irrational, unusual or even anti-social behaviour and action,
performance can reveal how ideas of social rectitude are maintained. His
work is driven by preoccupations concerning the way in which meaning is
constructed and transmitted though language and the way in which hearing and
gesture interact and define our relationships with one another and with the
world beyond the perimeters of our own bodies. Wild Boy extends these
preoccupations further by questioning the distinctions between individual
and collective freedoms, and moral and sensual values today.
Aaron Williamson has created performances for exhibitions at the V&A Museum,
London and the Banff Centre, Vancouver. His Lives of the Saints was shown at
the Tate Modern as part of the Live Culture exhibition in 2003. Williamson
is a past recipient of The Arts Council of England Helen Chadwick Fellowship
(2001-2), and the Live Art Development Agency’s One to One Bursary.
The Showroom is financially assisted by Arts Council England, London Office.
Aaron Williamson is the recipient of a three-year AHRB Fellowship.
Tim Allen, Adelaide Bannerman, Claire Barclay, Jordan Baseman, Ólöf
Björndóttir, Iwona Blazwick, Pavel Büchler, Chelsea School of Art, Paul
Collett, Laura Emsley, ezppl, Peter Fillingham, Rose Finn-Kelcey,
FlatPack001, Rebecca Fortnum, Eric Franck, Frieze, General Public Agency,
Simon Grant, Jackie Haliday, Donna Jamieson, Ceri Hand, Margot Heller, Paul
Hobson, Martin Holman, Claire Hooper, Jane Lee & Martin Hopkinson, Matthew
Hunt, Sue Jones, Naseem Khan, Franz Koenig, Kate MacGarry, Lynn MacRitchie,
Anna Milsom, Moose Foundation for the Arts, Grace Jane Muller, Paul
Nicholson, Campbell & Mairi Ogg, Michael O’Pray, Maureen Paley, Andrea
Phillips, Sarah Pulvertaft, Alison Raftery, Craig Richardson, Signwave, John
Slyce, Simon Starling, Eva Tait, David Thorp, Transmission Gallery,
Catherine Ugwu, Isabel Vasseur, Marc Vaulbert de Chantilly, Grant Watson and
White Window are all actively supporting the work of the gallery by joining
The Showroom's Friends Scheme.
Opening: 19 April 19.00 – 21.00
The Showroom
44 Bonner Road
London
Wednesday – Sunday 13.00 – 18.00hrs