We Are All Just Pixels

On April 29, 2017 at 3 pm

This programme is part of Pont/Bridge an ongoing partnership between LUX and Dazibao.

A programme of contemporary British artists’ moving image works that appropriate disparate televisual material, suspending their original contexts and placing them into new affective orders. Selected in the context of Kathryn Elkin’s exhibition, Television the works find intimacy and subjectivity in their sources to reassert the personal in an increasing mass of media. The programme is presented with a series of short interludes by artist Stephen Sutcliffe which act as punctuations mirroring the rhythms of TV. 

We are All Just Pixels is programmed by Kathryn Elkin and Benjamin Cook, and presented by their collaborator, artist and curator, George Clark. 

PROGRAMME 

Corin Sworn & Charlotte Prodger, HDHB (2011) — 10 min.

Stephen Sutcliffe, A Policeman is Walking (2011) — 1 min.

Lucy Clout, An Intimate, Detached Property (2012) — 8 min.

James Richards, Radio at Night (2015) — 8 min.

Stephen Sutcliffe, Said the Poet to the Analyst (2009) 
— 2 min.

Gail Pickering, Near Real Time (2016) — 21 min.

Stephen Sutcliffe, The Garden of Proserpine (2008) — 2 min.

Laure Prouvost, We Know We Are Just Pixels (2015) — 5 min.

Corin Sworn & Charlotte Prodger

HDHB uses re-framing and compression to critique hierarchies of image quality. It suggests industrial modes of calibration as a process of sensory normalisation.

Corin Sworn (born 1976) is an artist who lives and works in Glasgow. Sworn won the fifth edition of the Max Mara Art Prize for Women organised by Collezione Maramotti (Italy), Max Mara and in collaboration with Whitechapel Gallery of London. In 2013, she showed at the Scottish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale along with two other artists. She is represented in the United Kingdom by Koppe Astner, in Germany by the Natalia Hug Gallery and in the United States by ZieherSmith. Sworn was a LUX Associate Artist 2010-2011.

Charlotte Prodger (born 1974) lives and works in Glasgow. Solo exhibitions include Spike Island, Bristol and Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin (2015-2016); Chelsea Space, London and Glasgow International, McLellan Galleries (2014); as well as, Studio Voltaire, London. She has presented performances at Tramway, Glasgow and Murray Guy, New York. Prodger was shortlisted for the Jarman Award 2013 and won the 2014 Margaret Tait Award. She is represented by Koppe Astner.

Stephen Sutcliffe

A Policeman is Walking repurposes the patterns of an early screensaver, as these seem to move and gesticulate to the audio of a poem being spoken. In Said the Poet to the Analyst, Anne Sexton’s poem of the same name operates as framework – a meeting between two people who interpret words for a living. Sutcliffe’s film gradually reveals a space in which to contemplate this. The Garden of Proserpine combines an excerpt from Monty Python, a looped instrumental section from a song by The Smiths and a recording of Judi Dench’s voice reading the poem The Garden of Proserpine by Algernon Charles Swinburne. 

Glasgow-based artist, Stephen Sutcliffe (born 1968) creates film collages from an extensive archive of British television, film, sound, broadcast images and spoken word recordings which he has been collecting since childhood. Recent exhibitions have included Hepworth Wakefield gallery (2016) and Tramway (2013). He is winner (with Graham Eatough) of the Contemporary Art Society Award 2015 and is working towards an exhibition at the Whitworth Art Gallery as part of the Manchester International Festival in 2017. He is represented by Rob Tufnell, London and Micky Schubert, Berlin. 

Lucy Clout

An Intimate, Detached Property explores the boundaries of domestic space as a site for drama; Clout’s film comes across as a deadpan analysis of the « success » of cookie-cutter suburban American houses in big production American sitcoms. 

Lucy Clout was born in Leeds in 1980 and lives and works in London. Performance and the experience of viewing performance constitute the basis of her practice. This is reflected in the production of objects, sound work, text and video. She holds a BFA from Goldsmiths College and an MFA from Royal College of Art. She is a lecturer in Fine Art at Goldsmiths College. Clout is represented by Limoncello and was a LUX Associate Artist 2009-2010. 

James Richards

Radio at Night is an assemblage of distorting and looping found audio and visual material, including industrial and medical films, news footage and broadcasts, as well as images of animals. The work is concerned with both the anxiety and pleasure of seeing and feeling in a technologically-saturated era. 

James Richards (born 1983) is a British artist who lives in Berlin and London, born in Cardiff. He studied Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art & Design, London. He won the Jarman Award 2012 and was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2014. In 2017 he will represent Wales in the Venice Biennial. He is represented by Cabinet Gallery, London and Rodeo Gallery, Istanbul and was a LUX Associate Artist in 2006-2007.

Gail Pickering

Intrinsically circular and episodic in form, Near Real Time reflects on our contemporary relationship with images, seen through the historical prism of a pioneering community television project. Their last surviving taped broadcasts provide the starting point for Pickering’s portrayal of a collective imagination and the ways in which it crystallised a relationship to camera. 

Gail Pickering lives and works in London. She was awarded a Film London FLAMIN Production Award in 2013 for a new long-form film and was commissioned by the ICA and Channel Four to make a short film for the 'Random Acts' series. Pickering has recently had two major solo exhibitions at La Ferme Du Buisson (Paris, 2014) and the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art (Gateshead, 2014-2015).

Laure Prouvost

Attributing human characteristics to inanimate objects, We Know We Are Just Pixels finds Laure Prouvost’s images forming a conversation amongst themselves. Discussing their existence and vulnerabilities, in relation to the viewer looking at them, the images want to be more than just pixels; they want to explore and exist outside of the machine upon which they are being played.

Laure Prouvost (born 1978) is a French artist living and working in London and Antwerp. She won the 2013 Turner Prize and the Max Mara Art Prize for Women in 2011. Her work has been shown internationally in numerous museums and galleries and she is represented by Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris/Brussels and carlier | gebauer, Berlin. She was a LUX Associate Artist 2008-2009.

Pont/Bridge is supported by the ministère des Relations internationales et de la Francophonie under the Coopération culturelle Québec-British Council.