Vancouver artist, Judy Radul, has produced a new multi-screen
installation for this exhibition. Downes Point was
filmed this summer in an arbutus grove on Hornby Island. This
coastal landscape is at once dramatic and contemplative. The
installation features two panoramic projections spatially
configured to implicate the observer in the middle of the
mise en scene. What initially appears as a man alone in a
clearing in the forest unfolds into an ambiguous interaction
between him and a cast of characters who he appears to be
judging or casting. In the process of deciphering the scene,
it becomes apparent that each image is actually a montage
of views that joins what is seen by one camera lens with the
view from another. The action is choreographed to accentuate
the spatial structures created by the five static cameras
which are arranged at precise angles to create an effect that
reveals the conical geometry of the lens. Through this formal
system, which insinuates an outside beyond the image frame,
the artist conceptually introduces absence into the spectacle
of nature and demarcates the scene into a spatial architecture.
The landscape is turned into a kind of theatrical stage that
shows the entrances and exits of the actors slipping in and
out of the scene and waiting backstage.
The
two pieces featured in this exhibition reveal Judy Radul’s
longstanding interest in the constituent elements of theatre.
As in previous works, she explores the conventions of theatrical
performance and cinema in a way that forces the tensions between
static staging and moving pictures. With the DVD installation,
And So Departed (Again) (2003), footage of a rehearsal
is presented on three screens corresponding to close up, medium
shot and long shot perspectives. Turning a rehearsal into
an endurance performance, five directors rehearse an actress
in a death scene for twelve hours. The scenes are improvisations
instigated by each director (they were) asked to focus on
an enactment of life leaving the body. Here, as in Downes
Point , the artist choreographs interactions between
directors, actors and “characters” that allow
for the chance elements of performance and an absurdist sense
of humour to surface.
Judy
Radul was born in Lillooet B.C. in 1962. She has an MFA from
Bard College, New York and teaches visual art at Simon Fraser
University. Her interdisciplinary practice embraces photography,
performance art, audio, sculpture, video, and mixed media
installation, and her critical writing has been published
extensively. In recent years she had solo exhibitions at The
Power Plant in Toronto and was part of Videodreams: Between
the Cinematic and the Theatrical at Kunsthaus Graz Austria.
Later this year Downes Point will be part of a group
exhibition on contemporary Vancouver art at MuHKA, Museum
of Contemporary Art in Antwerp Belgium.
Presentation House Gallery will produce a catalogue in conjunction
with this exhibition.
Curated
by Helga Pakasaar
Opening
Reception: September 16, 8 -10 pm
Artist
Talk: September 24, at 2 pm
