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12/2/2004

Gail Pickering

Matt's Gallery, London

''PRADAL''
Live installation

PRADAL is Gail Pickering's first solo exhibition in London. For Matt's Gallery she has constructed a large-scale sculptural installation incorporating a continuous live performance by a group of male actors. Referencing the language of Muscle Beach and the detritus of labour history, she merges her interests in durational performance, sculpture and drawing into a contemporary form of tableaux vivant (living picture).

Entering the gallery space the viewer is confronted by a huge, implausible abstract shape: a mountainous pile of matter poured onto a pristine architectural structure that falls somewhere between a stage and jetty. Closer inspection reveals the pile to consist of lentils, and the sheer mass of dried pulses helps to explain the collapse of parts of the structure underneath. Further into the gallery the extent of the spillage, reminiscent of Robert Smithson's Asphalt Rundown, becomes apparent. Extending into a mock beach landscape, it forms the backdrop to a group of male actors, muscular in physique, basking in the radiance of industrial heaters and construction-site lighting.

To one side of the gallery, a second, scaled-down version of the larger pile consists of custom-made colour-coded tracksuits - some worn by the actors - adorned with a proxy trade union emblem on the back. These uniforms or team kits are mirrored across the space in the identical fabric of a row of changing rooms, whose structure partially merges with that of the stage. This mimicking and fusing of structures and forms, this corrosion of functional boundaries, is reflected in the live element: voided of its potential productivity, it is condemned to its own externalised display of toil and exertion.
The seemingly random and un-eventful behaviour of the actors is based on a series of instructions issued by the artist. They act as if caught on hold, anticipating a performance forever delayed. They re-apply ‘Dream Tan' - a crucial fake tanning accessory to bodybuilding posing competitions - which eventually smudges anything they touch or wear throughout the day. The explicit eagerness of bare muscles waiting to flex a posing routine becomes submerged in idle wasting away somewhat like an industrial production-line consigned to history. This rehearsed nature of their apparently impromptu performance in many ways acts out a particularly claustrophobic perspective on the history of performance and participatory art of the 1960s and 70s reduced to its surface.

Friday 13 February - Sunday 28 March 2004

opening times: Friday - Sunday, 12-6

For further information and visual material, please contact Rosalind Horne, Project Manager

This project was generously supported by Arts Council London, The Arts and Humanities Research Board and Loughborough University
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OFF-SITE PROJECT

Matthew Tickle

What the eye can't see the heart can't grieve for

What the eye can't see the heart can't grieve for is the new public artwork by Matthew Tickle, to be seen at Queen Mary, University of London 8th Feb - 7th March 2004.

Visible from the Mile End Road during the hours of darkness, daily from 6pm until dawn.

A collaborative venture bringing together artist Matthew Tickle and theoretical physicist, Dr Fay Dowker, has produced a scintillating artwork that will light up the interior spaces of buildings, in time to the firing of Geiger counters triggered by background radiation. Funded by an EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council) grant and supported by Matt's Gallery and the Queen Mary Physics Department, the piece will provoke debate about the relationship between art and science.

Matt's Gallery
42-44 Copperfield Road
London
E3 4RR
Tel: 020 8983 1771
Fax: 020 8983 1435
Nearest tube: Mile End (Central and District Lines) DLR: Limehouse
Buses: 277, 25, D6, D7
Parking outside the gallery (free for disabled badge holders)

stampa

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