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22/5/2004

Sutapa Biswas

CGP London - Cafe Gallery, London

Birdsong

A MAJOR NEW INIVA TOURING EXHIBITION PRODUCED IN COLLABORATION WITH FILM AND VIDEO UMBRELLA

This exhibition is a major opportunity to view two stunning new films by Sutapa Biswas, one of the leading artists of her generation. Over the last seventeen years she has created an intensely evocative and challenging body of work, engaging with feminism, cultural identity and memory.
Birdsong is co-commissioned by inIVA and Film and Video Umbrella. It is a projected film tableau in which a horse is viewed in a domestic interior, standing motionless except for the gentle and subtle movements of its body. Seen through the eyes of a child – whose dream it is to have a horse living in his house – this haunting piece addresses the impossibility of dream and desire and the ‘squeezing out' of reality. The heavy physical presence of this large animal establishes a tension both with the small origami winged horse, like a child's mobile, shown in the accompanying shots and with the iconographic nature of the image. The inspiration for this particular work is Stubbs' painting Henry Fox and the Earl of Albemarle Shooting at Goodwood (1759), in which a young black servant can be seen holding his master's horse.
Magnesium Bird is a beautiful 16mm film made in the eighteenth century walled garden at the stately home of Harewood House in Leeds. It deals with loss, love and trepidation, but also serves as a record of a spectacular and ephemeral performance event, in which up to a hundred small birds sculpted from magnesium are ignited at dusk. This footage is intercut with young children dressed in red, running through the gardens and disrupting the poetic stillness of the space. Meanwhile Biswas's use of 16mm film heightens the sense of nostalgia and of a time lost or remembered.

Through the medium of film, Biswas takes us on a metaphysical journey, exploring the transformative nature of intimate and familial relationships. Having initially established a reputation as a painter in the 1980s, Biswas's transition to the moving image is informed by a strong painterly aesthetic. She draws on a variety of literary and visual sources in her films, from writings by Marcel Proust and the psychoanalyst Frantz Fanon, to paintings by George Stubbs and Edward Hopper.

Sutapa Biswas: Birdsong is an inIVA touring exhibition produced in collaboration with Film and Video Umbrella and supported by Arts Council England Grants for National Touring, the Arts and Humanities Research Board, the University of Southampton, Chelsea College of Art and Design, Magnesium Elektron and The Culture Company.

A monograph on Sutapa Biswas will be published by inIVA in collaboration with Reed College, Portland, Oregon, with essays by Ian Baucom, Guy Brett, Laura Mulvey, Griselda Pollock and Stephanie Snyder.

inIVA's programme of exhibitions and talks features artists and thinkers who explore the creative possibilities provided by the constant interaction of cultures in the contemporary world.

For images and further information on Sutapa Biswas please contact:
Nick Hallam (Press Officer) olivia@iniva.org or Natasha Anderson (Marketing Manager) natasha@iniva.org tel: 020 7729 9616.

Exhibition Dates: 26th May to 20th June 2004
Exhibition Hours: Wed to Sun from 12 noon to 6pm

Private View: 23rd May 2004 from 3 to 6pm.

Cafe Gallery Projects
The gallery, by the Lake, Southwark Park, Bermondsey, London SE16 2UA.
Signposted from Canada Water Tube/Bus station which is on the Jubilee and East London Lines.
Free entry, the gallery is fully accessible to people with disabilities
Tel/Fax/Answermachine: 020 7237 1230

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