THE
OPEN PRIZE 2011 FOR VIDEO PAINTING
AN EXHIBITION OF WORK BY SHORT LISTED ARTISTS SARA BJARLAND DAVID BRAZIER & KELDA FREE SIDSEL CHRISTENSEN SUSIE DAVID TANIA DOLVERS MARK MAXWELL ERIN NEWELL ROZ MORTIMER
#haiku, Remarks on Medan (Tahrir Version), 2011
JASMINA METWALY
Winner of The Open Prize 2010
THE OPEN PRIZE 2011
See Open Gallery at
CONTENTS Foreword
The art and philosophy festival at Hay p.02
Nick Hackworth, Director, Paradise Row
18th – 20th November 2011
Introduction
The Open Prize 2011
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“Not to be missed”
The Open Prize Shortlist The New Statesman Sara Bjarland
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David Brazier and Kelda Free “One of the UK’s Sidsel Christensen hidden gems” GQ Susie David
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Tania Dolvers
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Mark Maxwell
p.11 “The art and soul of the party” Harper’s Bazaar p.12
Roz Mortimer Erin Newell
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The Jury Stuart Croft Crunch 2011 will showcase the winning work by this Lawson as well as a number of short year’s OpenHilary Prize recipient listed works and Tomexciting Morton new material by George Barber, Gabrielle Le Bayon and Alys Williams. Laura Sillars The festival, running from the 18th – 20th November 2011, will also be host to an impressive range of cultural, artistic and intellectual figures. From Hans Ulrich Obrist “the most powerful man in the international art world’ (Guardian) to Susan Hiller, fresh from her retrospective at the Tate earlier this year, the Crunch 2011 speakers will debate and engage with this year’s theme, ‘Awake in the Universe’. For tickets, please visit:
artfestivalathay.org follow us: @crunchfestival facebook.com/crunchfestival
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THE OPEN PRIZE 2011
FOREWORD Within the intellectual landscape of contemporary art, video painting, the genre of art-making that The Open Prize celebrates and supports, stands out as a highly unusual project.
It is unusual firstly because the formation of the genre was explicitly and directly inspired by a specific philosophical program - outlined by Hilary Lawson in his book Closure - and secondly because the genre is so clearly defined and thus self-limited. The Open Prize defines video painting as moving image work filmed using a stationary camera that has not been subsequently edited and carries no soundtrack.
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To investigate why these characteristics renders video painting so atypical reveals some of the failings within the culture of contemporary art whilst conversely suggesting what is inherently laudable about efforts, such as The Open Prize, to open up new creative territories. It also provides some insight into the often deliberately overstated relationship between contemporary art and philosophy.
THE OPEN PRIZE 2011
In the contemporary art world, as in the wider Western world, the advance of Globalization and rampant market forces over the last few decades have spawned the emergence of a kind of superficial and degenerate pluralism. The eclipse of the era of Modern Art with its parade of successively dominant, mutually exclusive art movements is seen implicitly as a victory for a kind of quintessentially contemporary, relaxed, openminded hipness. The opposite mindset that asks if particular ways of thinking or doing might be more valuable, necessary or even correct than others, is now seen as, potentially, dangerously monomaniacal and fascistic and certainly outmoded. There are no contemporary equivalents of a figure like Clement Greenberg, the archetypal Modernist critic who (like him or loathe him) thought seriously and deeply about art’s relationship with the world and helped foster a highly particular, nuanced and meaningful subculture of art-making and discourse.
A visit to one the major art fairs is the best way to get the measure of the postmodern smorgasbord that has emerged since the 1980’s. In the booths of galleries from around the world work of every style, type, medium or any other conceivable category sit, stand or hang side by side. Diversity and freedom of expression are, of course, to be celebrated but, in a dynamic analogous to that at play in the global arena of ideology, the evaporation of a meaningful critical discourse is widely misread as the triumph of liberal culture instead of being seen for what it is: the hegemonic triumph of neo-liberal free market ideology.
Crudely put, in a world where anything goes, nothing matters.
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THE OPEN PRIZE 2011
The stance of The Open Prize is, then, happily untimely. Its particular concerns that cluster around the concept of openness (namely, the problem of subjectivity and authorship, indeterminacy, contingency, the ‘natural’ dynamics of the environments around us, etc.) are testament to an engagement with the world of impressive intensity, be it emotive or aesthetic. That in turn is a result of the seriousness of thought that has underscored the video painting project and marks out the enterprise as philosophical.
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Amusingly it is its philosophical core that makes video painting stand out. Much of the art world fondly imagine themselves to be cheerleaders for the conceptual, without really worrying about what a concept might be. On closer examination what the conceptual nature of the contemporary art world really amounts to is the dominance of a strand of contemporary artmaking that rehashes the styles and concerns of pioneering group of artists from the 1960’s and 1970’s whose work has been retrospectively labeled as Conceptual Art. Obeying the law of diminishing returns this strand of work tends to bear only a superficial but clearly visible aesthetic resemblance to work of that period, as in say the casual use of text, or low-fi materials or a geometric symbol as idiot-proof and market pleasing signifiers of the conceptual. Ironically the brave and adventurous spirit of those artists who created Conceptual Art, or any other groups of thinkers and makers who have had the curiosity and willingness to think and do, a little differently, is best articulated in the form of endeavours such as The Open Prize and in the extraordinary range of the work it showcases. Nick Hackworth Director, Paradise Row
THE OPEN PRIZE 2011
INTRODUCTION: THE OPEN PRIZE 2011 The Open Prize was created by Open Gallery to support artists working in the challenging medium of video art. Specifically, the Prize rewards achievement in Video Painting, a non-narrative medium pioneered by the philosopher Hilary Lawson. Video Painting, a movement now in its 10th year, is defined by a parsimonious set of rules that has been compared to those of Dogme film in cinema. The work must be created using a stationary camera with no dialogue or sound. There can be no subsequent manipulation or editing of the image. In forcing the camera to become a singularly focused, unblinking eye, the viewer is encouraged to change their gaze, abandoning the attempt to determine an unfolding scene or a narrative frame. Through this denial of meaning and narrative, the viewer rediscovers how to see.
“It sounds rigorous to the point of limiting expressive possibilities. Right? Wrong. I should have had more confidence in my feelings about the way that limitation can focus and strengthen. In fact, there is a remarkable breadth and variety in… the different approaches to which Video Painting lends itself. Those damned rules… some how achieve a focus, the DNA of a movement.” - Anthony Haden-Guest, July 2010
Video Paintings are not usually shown individually but as Series. Video Painting Series gives the artist the ability to explore and develop a theme. In combination with technology that enables the work to be shown according to rules set by the artist in such a manner that the Series never loops, the medium has the capacity to challenge the notion that video art may be compelling for a single fleeting viewing but too repetitive for a permanent location be it a public space or a private collection. The inaugural Open Prize, in 2010, demonstrated the remarkable breadth and variety of the Video Painting form. This year’s shortlist represents a further step forward. These works, the latest addition to the unfolding potential of Video Painting, once again surprise due to the sheer diversity of material created within the selfimposed limits of this new medium. Rebecca Steinitz Open Gallery
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THE OPEN PRIZE 2011
THE OPEN PRIZE SHORTLIST SARA BJARLAND Orbit, 2009, 00:03:00 Landing, 2011, 00:03:42 Passage, 2011, 00:04:17
Sara’s work explores representations of nature; more specifically she is interested in nature in the everyday sphere as something close to her, personal, something ordinary and mundane, rather than exotic, distant or wild. She uses the video camera as a way to look closely, carefully and often for prolonged periods of time at a specific and sometimes isolated subject. The camera for her is like a third eye, through which things can become hypnotic, surreal, magical. 06
Passage and Landing are two videos filmed in Istanbul last year. They show two different kind of journeys in which birds are the main characters. Orbit is an exploration of the spatial aspects of a dandelion. By slowly rotating, the different parts of the flower come in and out of focus, creating a hypnotic effect and opening up layers of space inside the flower.
Biography Sara Bjarland, born in Helsinki in 1981, studied photography at Kent Institute of Art and Design in Rochester and, later, Fine Art Media at the Slade School of Fine Art in London where she graduated in 2007. Sara’s work has been shown internationally, and recent shows include Possible Wings (C3 Gallery, Amsterdam), Salon Photo Prize (Matt Roberts Arts, London), Impakt Festival (Utrecht) RE:Animate (Oriel Davies, Newtown Wales), and Visions in the Nunnery (The Nunnery Gallery, London).
Landing, 2011
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DAVID BRAZIER & KELDA FREE Commute I, 2010, 00:04:00 Commute II, 2010, 00:04:00
High speed train links have transformed areas near Tokyo into bed towns that serve the global metropolis. The artists were interested in identity not fixed but transient between states of work and home, between personal moments and public space. They worked with commuters to make video portraits by filming their reflection in the train window on their way home at night. The point of focus varies from commuter to what lies beyond. 07
Biography David studied Fine Art in Australia, was awarded a scholarship to École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris, and graduated with a MFA from Goldsmiths College, London in 2008. Kelda draws on experience as a landscape architect having worked in London’s most innovative practices on major creative projects in the public realm. They have been awarded residencies in Europe, India and Japan and their work has been shown internationally, including at the Athens Video Festival this year. One of their video pieces is shortlisted for the EWA Awards 2011.
Commute, 2010
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SIDSEL CHRISTENSEN Study for Composition III, 2010, 00:01:05 Birgitta’s Veil, 2009, 00:06:29 Light, 2010, 00:00:17 Study for Composition VI (Collectors at the end of the world), 2011, 00:00:55
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Sidsel engages with the workings of a subjectivity that unfolds between authenticity and fictional constructs of the self. Specifically she looks at different possibilities for the imagination to transform perceived reality for an individual or group. She uses the camera as a ‘social’ tool to engage with an intimacy that revolves around body language and narratives of subjectivity. The focus is on capturing a somewhat idealised ‘space’ in between the artist and the subject/audience, where creative input and framing on both sides creates the work. Initially this is a space of potential, power struggle and friction. Currently, she is investigating the possibility of immersion and ecstatic experience in contemporary spaces and looking at how inner, emotive visions can be linked to the visual language of abstraction in art.
Biography
Study for Composition III, 2010
Sidsel is a London-based artist engaged in moving image, live-events and performance-based lectures. With a BA from Goldsmiths and an MA from the Royal College of Art, she exhibits widely both in the UK and Scandinavia. Between 2009 and 2011 she has shown work in London at the David Roberts Art Foundation, The South London Cultural Centre, Wilma Gold, The Royal Academy and Apiary Gallery. In 2011 she curated and exhibited a more substantial body of work at KINO KINO, Centre for Contemporary Art in Norway.
THE OPEN PRIZE 2011 THE OPEN PRIZE SHORTLIST
SUSIE DAVID Isolation Tank / Reservoir, 2011, 00:10:47
It was during her MA studies that Susie began her research into fluid indeterminacy, making close observations of bodies of water and exploring strategies that involved interaction with ‘fluid chance’. The two works shortlisted demonstrate the spontaneous way the artist handles her tools of observation, and her open process - the way the subject, the camera and artist overlap as the work is made. The camera lens is an analogical skin: an interface between being and the world; a mutual shore; our liminal zone. The liminal is the artist’s work site. Liminality, from the Latin meaning ‘threshold’, is the dynamic site of potential, where the inner and outer worlds meet. It is characterized by ambiguity and uncertainty. Definitions and identities dissolve, bringing about disorientation. There is a blurring of boundaries and in this state the world returns the gaze.
Biography Susie grew up by the River Dart in Devon. In 1990 she gained her BA at Middlesex University and then moved to Sicily for four years, exhibiting her gestural paintings in Sicily and mainland Italy. She returned to Devon to establish a studio in England, and undertook an MA in Fine Art at Plymouth University, graduating in 2008. Her short haiku films were shown at the Land/Water exhibition in the University of Wales, Swansea, 2007. Other exhibitions include the group exhibition Slippage at Peninsula Arts Gallery, 2008, and in Tempo Reale, British School at Rome, Italy 2010.
Isolation Tank / Reservoir, 2011
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THE OPEN PRIZE 2011 THE OPEN PRIZE SHORTLIST
TANIA DOLVERS Water Studies 1- 6, 2011 Water study 1, 00:03:59 Water study 2, 00:03:24 Water study 3, 00:04:00
Water study 4, 00:02:47 Water study 5, 00:04:00 Water study 6, 00:04:00
Tania’s work analyses representation of space and time, concepts of gendered space and our emotional relationship with the history of both moving image and the still.
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The shortlisted pieces represent a body of work exploring the relationship between the natural and synthetic. Examining the surrounding landscape, the project records the details caught within the juxtaposition of the natural and constructed. Ideas of masculine and feminine are explored through the relationship between the organic flow of the water and the form and physicality of the man made structure above. The contrast between the water and bridge creates a mesmerizing contraposition between form and fluidity, natural and organic, light and dark and stillness and motion.
Biography
Water study 1, 2011
After completing a BA at St Martins studying Photography and Film, Tania worked in post-production and then as a corporate photographer. Deciding to do an MA at LCC studying Fine Art Photography, she concentrated on producing a series of video self-portraits, combining both photography and film as mediums to explore the relationship between the indexical document of time, memory and the ongoing notion of spacio-temporality. After graduating, Tania moved to New York to work at Magnum Photography. Now Tania works as a freelance photographer and video artist. Her work has been featured in various exhibitions around London.
THE OPEN PRIZE 2011 THE OPEN PRIZE SHORTLIST
MARK MAXWELL Electra, 2010, 00:12:00
The video painting ‘Electra’ depicts an iconic, globally recognised image undergoing a slow process of disintegration. The object is the figure of Christ removed from the crucifix. The figure is suspended from two copper wires attached to the figure’s hands and submerged in a solution (copper sulphate and water). The submerged figure is acting as an electrode and situated next to the figure is its partner electrode. As the electric current travels down the electrodes, minute particles travel from one electrode to the other via the solution (the electrolyte). The figure of Christ very slowly breaks down and vapourous clouds (metal ions) are emitted from the body. Similarly, should the current be reversed, particles will gradually build up on the figure (like coral forming near a coastline).
Biography Mark Maxwell initially worked as assistant to artist musician Brian Eno on a series of projects relating to set and lighting designs for live musical performances entitled ‘Opal Evenings’. The designs would incorporate suspended sculptural forms with light projections. A series of projects followed with Maxwell creating concepts for pop videos, contemporary dance, exhibitions and live events, including working with Roger Waters, Feeder and Amnesty International. His short film entitled Naturaleza Meurta (Still Life) was recently selected for Cannes Film Festival (Short Film Corner 2011) and has been screened at the Directors Lounge Berlin Art Fair and LAFF Los Angeles.
Electra, 2010
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ROZ MORTIMER Sites of Memory, 2011 Marias, 00:02:14 Battlefield, 00:02:12 Quake, 00:02:12
Yellowstone, 00:02:59 Ridge, 00:04:00 Wash, 00:01:43
Sites of Memory is a collection of six video pieces coming out of a larger body of work exploring notions of landscape, memory and forgetting. During the spring of 2011 the artist spent four months living in Montana. The American West is a place that is defined as historically young by its settlers, yet it is actually rich in history and imbued with memory of people and of cultures. Much is controlled in how this part of the world is historicised and memorialised.
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In these works it is the tension between the history of each place and the indexical link the artist has standing at each site that is interesting. History becomes collapsed. The landscapes, whether they are epic or banal, take on the memory of past peoples and past events. These six sites of memory filmed in Montana, Utah and Wyoming, are contemporary landscapes that have witnessed massacres, natural disasters, epic battles, lost settlements and sacred histories. These landscapes are imprinted with the histories of many people across two centuries, from the settlers to the Blackfeet, Shoshone, Nez Perce, Anasazi, Crow, Sioux and Navajo Nations.
Biography Roz Mortimer is an artist and filmmaker who lives and works in London and Montana. Since 1993 she has been producing both short and long-form art films which have been widely screened around the world at film festivals, galleries, cinemas and on television. Her work has been supported by Arts Council England, British Council, Rockefeller Foundation, Wellcome Trust, Film London, LFVDA, LAFVA, Eastern Arts and Channel 4 Television.
Battlefield, 2011
THE OPEN PRIZE 2011 THE OPEN PRIZE SHORTLIST
ERIN NEWELL This Land is My Land, 2010 This Land is My Land 1, 00:03:26 This Land is My Land 2, 00:04:26 This Land is My Land 3, 00:03:59
Erin uses languages of observation, exploring the nature and nuances of memory interconnected with history and place. In This Land is My Land the artist projects two pieces of film on top of each other onto fragments of her body. One is a Memorial Day parade in the USA in the early 1950s; the other: a political demonstration for the union of Northern and Republic of Ireland taken in London in the 1960s. As a first-generation Irish-American, the artist examines the effect nationhood has on shaping the individual’s perception of others and of themselves. This work layers the projections on top of each other and over her skin – an inversion to the deeply rooted place attachments to homeland occupy within – they appear meshed and tattooed on the skin. The body not only acts as a screen for the projections, but as it shifts slowly, it becomes its own landscape, as if each individual operates as a self-contained universe.
Biography Erin Newell is an Irish-American artist, living and working in London. Having graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2010, her practice now revolves around new media. Recent exhibitions include: Ethnographic Terminalia, Eastern Bloc Centre for New Media & Interdisciplinary Art, (Montreal, Canada), Resonance Open at Raven Row, London, NEW SCREEN NEWCASTLE, Tyneside Cinema and the 2010 Whitstable Biennale. She has just created a new media artwork commissioned by Art at the Centre and is currently developing new artwork for the National Media Museum’s forthcoming exhibition Life Online (March 2012).
This Land is My Land - videos 1-3, 2011
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THE OPEN PRIZE 2011
2011 JURY STUART CROFT Artist-Filmmaker and RCA tutor Stuart Croft is an artist-filmmaker who writes and directs largely character-driven films for the gallery environment. He graduated from Chelsea College of Art in 1998 with an MA in Fine Art and has since shown his work at group and solo exhibitions around the world. He has shown retrospectives at FACT Liverpool (2007) and Gallery de Civica di Modena, Italy (2008). His most recent exhibition, entitled Comma 39, takes place at Bloomberg SPACE this month, as a result of an awarded commission in London this year. He is also currently tutor at the Moving Image Studio at the RCA.
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HILARY LAWSON Open Gallery Founder, Philosopher and Artist Hilary Lawson is a philosopher, filmmaker and video artist. Director of The Institute of Arts and Ideas and Vice-chair of the Forum for European Philosophy. Pioneer of the Video Painting and founding artist of the initial group that developed the video painting medium. As a philosopher he is best known for his philosophical work ‘Closure’ (2001). Video painting developed from the aesthetic theory outlined in the work. ‘Closure’ has been described as the first non-realist metaphysics and is an attempt to overcome the crisis of postmodernism, which he first identified in an earlier work: ‘Reflexivity: the Postmodern Predicament’.
THE OPEN PRIZE 2011
TOM MORTON Writer, curator and a contributing editor of Frieze Tom Morton is a contributing editor of Frieze Magazine, and co-curator (with Lisa Le Feuvre) of ‘British Art Show 7: In the Days of the Comet’. He has worked as curator at the Hayward Gallery, where he curated exhibitions by Erik van Lieshout, Matthew Darbyshire, and Cyprien Gaillard, and at Cubitt Gallery, London, where he curated exhibitions by Charles Avery, Matthew Day Jackson, and Annika Eriksson, among others. He was co-curator of the 2008 Busan Biennale, and curated the exhibition ‘How to Endure’ for the 2007 Athens Biennale. He is the author of numerous exhibition catalogues, and his writing has appeared in Metropolis M, Bidoun, and Map as well as other publications. 15
LAURA SILLARS Artistic Director, Site Gallery, Sheffield Laura Sillars is Artistic Director of Site Gallery, Sheffield and was previously Director of Programmes at FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology). Her interest in public engagement stemmed from leading Tate Liverpool’s Public Programme from 2003. She is passionate about continuing to build strong contemporary arts programmes across the UK and recently set up All Points North, a collaborative initiative to support the development of contemporary art across the North. She has a special interest in video art and as a Clore Leadership Fellow she has worked with Art Angel’s Co-Director James Lingwood to produce a feature documentary in Detroit with artist Mike Kelley. Her next project is a new commission with Zoe Beloff bringing together found film footage and cartoons and turning the gallery into a 1950s film studio.
THE OPEN PRIZE 2011
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The art and philosophy festival at Hay 18th – 20th November 2011
“Not to be missed” The New Statesman
“One of the UK’s hidden gems” GQ
“The art and soul of the party” Harper’s Bazaar
Crunch 2011 will showcase the winning work by this year’s Open Prize recipient as well as a number of short listed works and exciting new material by George Barber, Gabrielle Le Bayon and Alys Williams. The festival, running from the 18th – 20th November 2011, will also be host to an impressive range of cultural, artistic and intellectual figures. From Hans Ulrich Obrist “the most powerful man in the international art world’ (Guardian) to Susan Hiller, fresh from her retrospective at the Tate earlier this year, the Crunch 2011 speakers will debate and engage with this year’s theme, ‘Awake in the Universe’. For tickets, please visit:
artfestivalathay.org follow us: @crunchfestival facebook.com/crunchfestival