We love Richard Mosse’s immersive multi-channel video installation in the Curve which he has produced using a powerful telephoto military camera that can detect the human body from a distance of more than 30km and accurately identify an individual from 6.3km, day or night.
Still frame from Incoming, 2015–2016.
Three screen video installation by Richard Mosse in collaboration with Trevor Tweeten and Ben Frost. Co-commissioned by National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, and Barbican Art Gallery, London. Courtesy of the artist, Jack Shainman Gallery, New York and carlier|gebauer, Berlin.
Produced in collaboration with composer Ben Frost and cinematographer Trevor Tweeten the artwork investigates the migration crisis unfolding across the Middle East, North Africa and Europe. Narratives of the journeys made by refugees and illegal migrants are captured by this thermal camera which records the biological trace of human life. Projected across three 8 metre-wide screens, the video installation is accompanied by a visceral soundtrack blurring ambient field recordings with synthetic sound design to create an overwhelming, immersive experience.
Still frame from Incoming, 2015–2016. Three screen video installation by Richard Mosse in collaboration with Trevor Tweeten and Ben Frost. Co-commissioned by National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, and Barbican Art Gallery, London. Courtesy of the artist, Jack Shainman Gallery, New York and carlier|gebauer, Berlin.
Still frame from Incoming, 2015–2016. Three screen video installation by Richard Mosse in collaboration with Trevor Tweeten and Ben Frost. Co-commissioned by National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, and Barbican Art Gallery, London. Courtesy of the artist, Jack Shainman Gallery, New York and carlier|gebauer, Berlin.
At a time when, according to the UN, the world is experiencing the largest migration of people since World War II, with more than a million people fleeing to Europe by sea in 2015 – escaping war, climate change, persecution and poverty – Richard Mosse’s film presents a portrait of migrants made with a camera that sees as a missile sees. The film bears witness to significant chapters in recent world events, mediated through an advanced weapons-grade camera technology that reads only heat, and is blind to skin colour, capturing glowing bodies crossing dangerous waters, drowning at sea, or sleeping in makeshift camps, presenting a story of humans struggling against the elements for survival.
Still frame from Incoming, 2015–2016.
Three screen video installation by Richard Mosse in collaboration with Trevor Tweeten and Ben Frost. Co-commissioned by National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, and Barbican Art Gallery, London. Courtesy of the artist, Jack Shainman Gallery, New York and carlier|gebauer, Berlin.
Still frame from Incoming, 2015–2016.
Three screen video installation by Richard Mosse in collaboration with Trevor Tweeten and Ben Frost. Co-commissioned by National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, and Barbican Art Gallery, London. Courtesy of the artist, Jack Shainman Gallery, New York and carlier|gebauer, Berlin.
Richard Mosse: Incoming
The Curve, Barbican Centre – 23 April 2017 www.barbican.org.uk
Incoming, Richard Mosse in collaboration with Trevor Tweeten and Ben Frost at The Curve, Barbican on Photo by Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for Barbican Art Gallery
Incoming, Richard Mosse in collaboration with Trevor Tweeten and Ben Frost at The Curve, Barbican Photo by Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for Barbican Art Gallery
Incoming, Richard Mosse in collaboration with Trevor Tweeten and Ben Frost at The Curve, Barbican on February 14, 2017 in London, England Photo by Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for Barbican Art Gallery.
About The Artist
Mosse is renowned for work that challenges documentary photography. For Infra (2011) and The Enclave (2013), a six-channel installation commissioned by the Irish Pavilion for the Venice Biennale, Mosse employed a now discontinued 16mm colour infrared film called Kodak Aerochrome that transformed the lush green landscape of the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo into vivid hues of pink to create a surreal dreamscape. Questioning the ways in which war photography is constructed, Mosse’s representation of the ongoing armed conflict in eastern Congo advocates a new way of looking. In Breach (2009), Mosse embedded with the US Army in Iraq to document American military occupation of Saddam Hussein’s palace architecture. He has also worked extensively along the US- Mexico border, Israel-Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, the Balkans, Haiti, Pakistan, Iran, and other locations.
Richard Mosse was born in 1980 in Ireland and is based in New York. He earned a Postgraduate Diploma in Fine Art from Goldsmiths, London in 2005 and an MFA in Photography from Yale School of Art in 2008. He represented Ireland in the 55th Venice Biennale with The Enclave in 2013. He is a recipient of the Deutsche Bo?rse Photography Prize 2014, Yale’s Poynter Fellowship in Journalism, the B3 Award at the Frankfurt Biennial, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting grant, and a Leonore Annenberg Fellowship. Mosse has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions internationally at venues such as Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk; FOAM, Amsterdam; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Reykjavik Art Museum, Iceland; Irish Museum of Modern Art, Ireland; and most recently, Akademie der Ku?nste, Berlin. Richard Mosse is currently in the shortlist for the prestigious global award in photography and sustainability, Prix Pictet, due to be announced in May 2017.
