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4/2/2000

SODIUM BLINDNESS

The Photographers' Gallery, London

A group exhibition of six female artists working with video and photography... whose work explores contemporary experiences

of the urban space at night. Slowly sprawling from the west to the

east, the illumination of city spaces has been far from immediate. The

experience of entering areas of the city which are badly lit can be

vastly different from the experience of walking under the bright lights

of a busy city centre. Historically the bright lights of the west end

have become associated with entertainment and ‘night life’, whilst the

dark streets of less affluent areas of London have become associated

with criminal behaviour which goes undetected beneath the dark blanket

of nightfall. The work of the six artists in Sodium Blindness looks at

how women negotiate the city at night, this exhibition also attempts to

reveal how the contemporary city remains full of myths associated with

nocturnal activity.

Movement through city after dark is central to Sarah Conway’s video

work: a woman walks through unevenly lit empty London streets. This

everyday activity takes on a cinematic menace as the camera tracks her

route. Helen Couchman also takes the city streets as her focus: taking

the area surrounding the gallery space as her starting point, she

highlights our perceptions of a specific journey through the city

relating the journey to the APT Gallery.

Lynne Marsh’s video projection Venus . . . I see Blue is concerned with

an individual movement through space. Referencing the powerful

protagonists of video games, we confront a character who is in complete

possession of the space around her. Entering a dark space, the viewer

meets with a life-size character rushing forward through a landscape

that is reminiscent of the city portrayed in video arcade games.
Shizuka Yokomizo’s photographs also reveal a control and possession of

nocturnal space, but in her case the individuals are self assured

within their own domestic realm. In Strangers Yokomizo contacted a

group of individuals (whom she had previously not met) via letter and

asked them if she could photograph them anonymously. These strangers

were invited to stand looking out of a ground floor window of their

home at an allotted time in the evening. Their gaze returns that of the

camera to create a compelling series of surprisingly intimate

portraits.

Claudine Hartzell explores this relationship between inside and

outside, but she is more concerned with glances into a space rather

than from a space. Her images are of both corporate and domestic

interiors that we might glimpse when moving through the city at night.

Vicki Wetherill’s work likewise captures glimpses of an interior: over

a year she documented a single street in Paris’ red light district. In

her images we see the alluring glamour of a number of establishments

promising nocturnal delights.
Behind the enticing curtains which hang in front of peepshow doorways

lies a brightly lit interior offering sex for sale. Our glimpses of the

grotty worn carpets within show that these doorways are popular

thoroughfares for trade in the sex industry.


The Photographers' Gallery
5 & 8 Great Newport Street
London WC2H 7HY
Nearest tube Leicester Sq
Telephone +44 020 7831 1772
Fax +44 020 7836 9704
Minicom +44 020 73796057

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