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7/4/2005

Imogen Stidworthy

Frac Bourgogne, Dijon

Solo show

For her first solo show in France - at the invitation of the Burgundy Frac - Imogen Stidworthy has chosen several works made over the last ten years. These include Dummy (1998), acquired last year for the Frac collection. The sound installation and the different films and videos on show allow us to discover the world of this British artist who questions language and its transcription through sound and image.

The exhibition is constructed around two installations, with two videos playing on monitors, one projected video, and a sound installation also on show. In these pieces we both hear and see the different ways in which Imogen Stidworthy observes the multiple dimensions of language: its forms, its pathways through the body, what it introduces into the relationships between people, its connections to narrative.

In Dummy (1998), two 16mm films are projected back to back on a free-standing screen. A woman's mouth is shown on one side, reflected in a little mirror, while on the other side we see different shots of two bodies. The play between the voices allows us to understand that the conversation - seemingly between two people - is in fact being carried out by one person, a woman ventriloquist. Because of the fragmentary nature of the images, we are made to use our body as well as our eyes and ears to explore the fissure between the two sides of the screen, to move around the screen as if it were a sculpture in order to construct a global view of the piece.

The splitting apart of the self is at the core of the artist's work; identity is blurred through the separation of the voice and the body. This is illustrated by the second installation, Anyone Who Had a Heart (2004). Once again, a mise en abyme is produced through the confrontation of the installation as a whole and the two screens, which show two women singing in an anechoic chamber, a space that absorbs sound. The two women, professional Cilla Black impersonators, sing the song that lends its title to the piece. The women seem threatened in their identities: singing in the same voice, they appear to blend into one as the images and the sound connect. Once more, a fault line opens up in our perception of the real through the confrontation of screens of different sizes, close ups and long shots, disjunctions between the image, the sound and the expression.

The film Driver (1996-1997) is projected onto a screen. We see a body moving strangely in a car, visibly not finding its place. Here, rather than a means of transport, the car - immobile - is envisaged as an interior. As with the works concerning language, we are absorbed by our desire to grasp the narration through film's linearity.

Substitutes (2002), a video, takes the form of a documentary film. Once again, two singers are featured. In the credit titles at the end of the film, the artist mentions that she met the two young Romanians by chance during a football match between Germany and Romania. They are filmed wearing the colours of their football team, singing a traditional song. The artist invited people of Romanian origin, living in different countries, to suggest a translation. The diversity of their testimonies highlights the gulf that exists, in most cases, between the song itself and their experience of it. Notions of origin and authenticity reveal themselves in the commentaries on both the singers' clothes and gestures and the traditional song itself. The blending of the singing and the speakers' reactions to it provokes a sort of collage of sound, a patchwork of strange connections, a texture rather than a text or a song.

Finally, two pieces constitute a genealogy of works that Imogen Stidworthy has made on the subject of the voice; while it is also envisaged in its cultural dimension, the voice is above all shown in its organic dimension - a production of the body that requires the activity of a multitude of organs and muscles. But (1994), is a sound installation. The words and phrases are halting, tremulous, jerky; it is difficult to know whether the problem is one of pronunciation, of loss of control over the voice due to emotion or a technical problem during the recording. As there is no image, we cannot know what is going on. The work functions through the breaking up of language that takes place somewhere between the words' meaning and their dilution in sonorous matter.

In Elocution (1995), an old man and a young woman face us, side by side. The man pronounces Italian words, short phrases and English nursery rhymes in a clear voice. The woman forms words on her mouth without pronouncing them. The man and woman - who could be professor and pupil, or parent and child - are playing games of identity, not only about maleness and femaleness, but also about the generations, about power and relating.

Imogen Stidworthy shows language, perception and the act of listening intertwining to create the underpinnings of inter-human relationships and the self. In these works, learning to speak and using language - themes that the artist often approaches through their absence, their pathological states - are ways of questioning our interaction with the world.

Claire Legrand

This exhibition was made possible through the support of the Minister of Culture (DRAC: Regional Direction of Cultural Affairs of Burgundy) and the Regional Council of Burgundy.

Opening on Friday 8 April from 6 pm

Fonds régional d'art contemporain de Bourgogne
49 Rue de Longvic - Dijon
Open from Mon-Sat from 2-6 pm
A guided tour will be given on Saturday 30 April at 3 pm at the Frac - free entry

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