Movement in Location, Ruskin Gallery, Cambridge

Dates: 9-24 May 2012

Abstract:

Solo exhibition at Ruskin Gallery, Cambridge. I was the first artist to be awarded an exhibition in this newly digitised gallery space - the result of a £380,000 investment. This solo exhibition marked the screening of a new piece of site specific work shot at Poole Port with dancer and choreographer Cathy Seago (Merce Cunningham Dance, now Snr Lecturer, Contemporary Choreographic Practice, Winchester University). Whilst working in this large scale industrial environment, we focused on ideas of surface and breath to visually link location and dancer.

The work utilised the eighteen screens and projections in the space, using Watchout software, which allowed me to effectively choreograph the installation. It’s a highly flexible system that enabled me to play with scale, repetition and relate the movement on one screen to the movement on another. The use of this software enabled this work, which is a sensorial, physical response to a very particular coastal environment to be exhibited in a way that conveyed the particular movements we were working with: the repetition, rhythm and intimacy. As with my earlier work, I take large, dramatic environments and focus in on smaller details, creating a close up encounter within a location. This closeness is interrupted using changes in rhythm and pace: alternating between faster paced movement, to meditative, quieter moments. The dancers who visited this exhibition very much understood this, and responded in terms of their own movement in the space itself.

For exhibition stills see flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizziesykes/sets/72157632024188709/

For video documentation of this exhibition see vimeo: https://vimeo.com/59437722

Source: Manual

Preferred by: Lizzie Sykes