Anthony Shapland
dal 6/9/2007 al 20/10/2007
Segnalato da
6/9/2007
Anthony Shapland
Chapter Gallery, Cardiff
The show includes False Dawn, a two-screen work that documents a film crew developing a lighting sequence. Earlier works in the exhibition include Nocturne ii which looks at the transition from night to day, and the point at which a night out blends into the start of a working day.
Solo show
It’s the briefest of pauses, with not time enough to even turn full circle and look
at all the lights this city throws out to the sky, and it’s a pause which is easily
broken. A slamming door, a car alarm, a thin drift of music from half a mile away,
and already the city is moving on, already tomorrow is here.” Jon McGregor, If
Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things (2002)
‘Suddenly After a Long Silence’ explores the moments of change and temporal shifts
that occur between two defined states. Shapland’s exhibition will feature a series
of documentary-style video works that not only observe the ‘real’ or the ‘actual’
but also reference notions of staging, scripting and artifice.
Shapland will create new works for Chapter, including False Dawn, a two-screen work
that documents a film crew developing a lighting sequence. The viewer is held
between the revelation of the practicalities involved in creating an illusionary and
fictional world for the camera, and the desire to believe in the end result as the
False Dawn is heralded by a caged canary that greets the ‘day’ with an optimistic
song.
Earlier works in the exhibition include Nocturne ii (2005) which looks at the
transition from night to day, and the point at which a night out blends into the
start of a working day. Exploring how behaviour and the rules of engagement differ
in the city at night, a CCTV camera set-up to film outside, observes the way that a
doorway becomes a private space as night after night different groups of people –
from Bunny Girls on a Hen Night to lone males peeing – use the same area to
demonstrate a range of behaviour; a catalogue of repeated events re-enacted with
different casts. The dialogue is scripted on an adjacent screen and serves to
emphasise the small repetitive acts that flit between emotion and action.
A Sign (2006) was produced for exhibition in Moscow and has its debut in Wales at
Chapter. Filmed from a static viewpoint, the coolly dispassionate eye of the camera
observes a discarded Christmas tree that lies abandoned on the side of a road. The
tree ignites into flame and eventually burns itself out in an achingly tragic
exploration of the search for meaning in everyday life.
Throughout all of the works exhibited here we are held in a sort of twilight space,
neither day nor night, fiction nor reality. It is here in this playful uncertainty
that the work forces us to reconsider the everyday things we feel sure of.
Biography
Born in Pontypridd, Anthony Shapland is a Cardiff-based artist who has exhibited
nationally and internationally. He is also known for his curatorial work with g39,
an artist-run organisation based in Cardiff of which he was a co-founder. ‘Suddenly
After a Long Silence’ is Shapland’s first solo exhibition in the UK.
Previous group exhibitions include: ‘Host’, Consortium, Amsterdam (2006); ‘Something
Of The Night’, Leeds City Gallery, Leeds (2005); ‘Over and Over, Again and Again’,
CAC, Vilnius, Lithuania (2005); ‘Unplumbed’ Keith Talent, London; ‘We are not here
to give you pleasure’, Art & Essai, Rennes, ProtoAcademy, Edinburgh and Rraum02,
Frankfurt. Recent commissions include: ‘Another New Babylon’, CBAT, Cardiff (2006);
‘Nightworkers’, Vitrine, Leeds City Centre (2005); ‘State of Preservation’,
Baden-Wϋrttemberg, Germany (2004).
Preview: Friday 7 September, 7-9pm
Chapter Gallery
Market Road, CF5 - Cardiff
Free admission