Image:Guy Sherwin, working still from Staircase (2011). Courtesy of the artist
Curated by Charles Danby 16th September – 25th November 2011
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This September, celebrated experimental film artist Guy Sherwin presents an exhibition of new and rarely seen works at Siobhan Davies Studios. Sherwin has occupied a central position within experimental film culture since the mid 1970s. His works are best characterised by their use of movement and light, both within the films and within the processes he sets up in making them. Here he presents a new three-screen work Staircase (2011) filmed at Siobhan Davies Studios, alongside older works including rarely seen drawings and mechanical pieces. Guy Sherwin: Movements in Light opens at Siobhan Davies Studios on 16 September and admission is free.
For Staircase (2011) Guy Sherwin has drawn reference from his early optical film work Musical Stairs (1977), working directly from one of the central internal architectural features of Siobhan Davies Studios, its suspended staircase. Sherwin’s new work approaches the structure of the stairs through his current spatial pre-occupations of mirroring, movement and replicated environments.
Movement, light and line are the binding features of other works in the exhibition. Sherwin examines these often through peripheral urban landscapes, mapping environments and territories by the traces of human presence within them.
Staircase (2011) will be presented alongside a newly installed version of Window (1975), Window #2 (1975/2001), a single screen projection on to suspended glass. Also shown will be drawings from the works, Tree Reflection #2 (2011) and Sound Cuts (2007), and the motorised sculptural work, Tree Reflection (Rotation) (2011). Three film works will also be shown: Coots (c1998) Clouds (c1998) and Bicycle (c1978).
Guy Sherwin’s Movements in Light is the first of a series of exhibitions, Animated Environments, curated by Charles Danby for Siobhan Davies Studios. This programme investigates images as still frames of time, within the fields of photography, film and performance.
Guy Sherwin weekend – installation, performances and talk, 7- 9 October 2011
To accompany the exhibition, Guy Sherwin presents a special programme of installations of his work and events around his practice.
On Friday 7 October, Sherwin will present an evening of performances: Sound Cuts (2007) performed with artist Lynn Loo, Wires (2004/2009), Bay Bridge from Embarcadero (2002/2006), and the seminal Man with Mirror (1976/2006). Following these performances he will take part in a panel talk with Joy Sleeman (Head of Art History, Slade, UCL) and Steven Ball (artist and film researcher), who will discuss ideas of ‘environment’ in response to Sherwin’s performances, from the working environment of the projectors, to the depicted environments of the landscapes within the work.
Sherwin will also install Tree Reflection #2 (2004), in which a single strip of film runs in opposite directions through two interlocked projectors, projecting the images onto opposing walls. This will be on show for the whole weekend.
Guy Sherwin: Selected films from the LUX archive, 9 November 2011 (7-9pm), at the South London Gallery
In conjunction with Movements in Light at Siobhan Davies Studios, Guy Sherwin will select a programme of films for a special screening at the South London Gallery. The programme sheds light on, and forms a temporal dialogue with, films, drawings and mechanical objects shown at Siobhan Davies Studios. Tickets £5/£3 concs, call 020 7703 6120
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