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16/6/2005

Anna Lucas

One Severn Street, Birmingham

Multi-screen installations

One Severn Street announces the concluding exhibition at the temporary project space in Birmingham. Anna Lucas’ multi-screen installations transform daily experience into epic drama and sensual intimacy. Her recent works combine scenes of human interaction with the landscape, gathered from several locations.

For One Severn Street, Lucas has made a new piece which explores our romanticism and domination of the rural landscape. ‘Paloma Ceffyl’ is derived from Lucas’ video archive and brings together scenes caught by chance rather than searched for or constructed. This is Lucas’ first exhibition to combine video on this scale, rather than film. The deliberate move from film to video in this instance allows the opportunity to engage with an intimate ‘found’ moment for a longer period of time.

Paloma (Spanish for pigeon) and Ceffyl (Welsh for horse) make a linguistic reference to the country in which each is filmed. Lucas has captured footage during working trips to diverse agricultural locations including Wales, the ‘plasticultura’ area of Southern Spain and the sugar plantations of Mauritius.

Included in this installation is an image of a horse being massaged by a woman. The camera reveals a sensuous and trusting moment as the woman’s hands move across the horses neck and torso. The apparent tenderness and physicality is intensely suggestive, and further dramatised by the fall of light and intimacy with which the camera explores the scene. Lucas provides us with the privileged position from which to consider their relationship more closely.

Another scene reveals a group of amateur pigeon breeders gathering their multicoloured hand dyed birds. The mutual acceptance and willingness to participate in this relationship is clearly visible. In contrast, on another screen a pack of horses are chased away from the headlights of a car and driven into the darkness. Elsewhere two boys build a fire in the woods, while a raging fire sweeps through a field of sugar cane. We are at once reminded of the tenuous link between our primitive need for food and warmth, and the wider implications resulting from our indulgences. These images offer different viewpoints from which to reconsider our interaction with animals, and ultimately our relationship with nature.

The combination of works that form this installation create a collective dialogue, and propose an evolving composition of moving images. Lucas’ considered placing of screens, rich filmic sensibility and playful use of scale enable the viewer to engage with the work on an intimate and monumental level, whilst heightening the intangible drama of a found moment.

One Severn Street is a temporary project space for Birmingham dedicated to the commissioning and presentation of artists’ film and video. Saki Satom (Japan), Sabrina Mezzaqui (Italy) and Anna Lucas (UK) have been invited to exhibit new and previously unseen works in a sequence of three solo exhibitions, running from April – July 2005.

Preview Friday 17 June 2005, 6 - 8pm

One Severn Street
The Mailbox - Birmingham
Opening hours are Tuesday to Saturday 12 – 6pm

stampa

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