Christopher Stewart
dal 2/2/2006 al 24/3/2006
Segnalato da
2/2/2006
Christopher Stewart
Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool
Observations. The artist presents two projects that continue his poetic exploration of networks of security and surveillance. ‘Kill House’ (2005) is a series of photographs of a house in Arkansas, that was built for the purpose of training private military personnel to clear domestic houses in conflict zones. Video installation ‘Levanter’ (2002) takes its name from a meteorological phenomenon that forms for a few days a year in the Straits of Gibraltar.
Observations
“Here is the constitutive ground of our current unease.. Christopher Stewart’s powerfully disorienting photographs detonate our Orwellian anxieties… [they are]…preliminary studies in the banality of dystopia."
Mike Davis, 2003
Christopher Stewart presents two previously unseen projects that continue his poetic exploration of international networks of security and surveillance, and of the culture of fear and insecurity in which they are implicated.
‘Kill House’ (2005) is a series of photographs of a house in Arkansas, USA, that was built for the purpose of training private military personnel to clear domestic houses in conflict zones such as Iraq and Afghanistan. The deserted interiors resemble a grim stage-set constructed from scarred and smoke-damaged concrete and iron, punctuated by occasional, skeletal props of abandoned furniture. “The ‘architect’ of this building imagines a dystopian scenario, a polarised version of the American domestic house where form follows fear rather than function" (Christopher Stewart).
Stewart’s video installation ‘Levanter’ (2002) takes its name from a meteorological phenomenon that forms for a few days a year between Africa and Europe in the Straits of Gibraltar. The Levanter cloud envelops the summit of the Rock of Gibraltar and the military base that is built on it. Stewart’s video shows us a military surveillance/monitoring tower, shrouded in mist, and Levanter-obscured views down to the port, the Straits and the African coast. “The two images represent both the limits and the freedoms of globalisation: the need on the one hand for close monitoring and paranoia and on the other for free trade and freedom of movement of goods and people. The appearance of the Levanter seems to symbolically suggest the limitations of both enterprises" (Christopher Stewart).
Open Eye Gallery
28-32 Wood Street - Liverpool