THIS IS WHERE WE CAME IN
Angus-Hughes Gallery
26 Lower Clapton Rd.
London E5 0PD
An indeterminate zone, frozen, governed by history’s Law where escape requires of us to float, as if just above the ground. It is a location devoid of humanity, only dancing avatars: an analogue stage choreographed in the digital. Stress levels exceeded as vectors take opposite directions. The past imposes on the present like a dream folding time in on itself. Uncertainties permeate, the ethereal is made solid, and the fixed turns out to be no more than a set of coordinates. Old Utopian possibilities become nostalgia as confidence in the present collapses. Here, as one landscape of authority occupies another, one apparently Cartesian, the other, an endless simulacrum of possibilities, we experience our lightness of being. We are escape artists making it up as we go along. The heroic quest for new horizons has gone virtual, while the past piles up at our feet like Benjamin’s angel. Disembodied, our sense of place can no longer be located as history and gravity give up their influence.
Richard Ducker’s practice brings together a variety of processes that are juxtaposed to evoke narratives and explore multiple positions. Sculptural forms adopt science fiction cinematic tropes, while wall texts articulate the anxiety of information overload, and other elements such as sound and video suggest paranoiac excess. Past and future are locked in a theatrical spectacle, with nostalgia and anxiety used as tools to unpick the present. Here there are references to the Cold War, the scientific certainties and dreams of technical ‘progress’ of the early space race, coded statist control, and our present where images and knowledge are not to be trusted.
Ruth Gibson & Bruno Martelli travel in the virtual to explore foreign landscapes, a mapped topography where physical place is converted into the alien, navigating between flesh and data. Through dance, sonic, digital and film their work considers the spaces that are particular to our movement in the world, capturing a complex sense of presence. Here, they play out in the cinematic landscape of Central Otago, de-territorialised in synthetic Mocap suits to become a camouflaged palette. Gibson & Martelli explore how the figure, through the digital double, navigates both real and virtual landscapes. This process often dissolves the separation between the spectator and spectacle — they use the term viewer, player, user, and performer interchangeably, immersion and interactivity is a key element of their practice. WAHAWAEWAO is created by an international collaboration with artists from New Zealand: composer Russell Scoones & choreographer Carol Brown..
Since gaining his MA from Goldsmiths in 1991, Richard Ducker has exhibited widely throughout the UK and internationally, including: Kettles Yard, Cambridge; Royal Academy, Edinburgh; Mappin Gallery, Sheffield; The Kitchen, New York; The Yard Gallery, Nottingham; Katherine E Nash Gallery, Minnesota, USA; Venice Biennale (off-site); Anglia Ruskin Gallery, Cambridge; and in London: Serpentine Gallery; Flowers Central; Cell Project Space; Standpoint Gallery; CGP; V22; Anthony Reynolds Gallery; Angus-Hughes Gallery; Coleman Projects; Collyer Bristow Gallery, dalla Rosa Gallery; and Arthouse1 Gallery.Ducker also founded the Fieldgate Gallery in 2006, and continues to curates under the name of Fieldgate Gallery, www.fieldgategallery.com. Richard Ducker lives and works in London.
Bruno Martelli graduated from Central St. Martins and Ruth Gibson from University of Kent at Canterbury. Their worldwide commissions include residencies in North America, China, Australia and New Zealand and exhibitions at The Barbican Gallery, Detroit Institute for Art, and The Venice Biennale. Recent solo shows include ‘Big Bob’ (2015) at Jaffe-Friede Gallery in Hanover, USA, ‘MAN A’ (2015) at UNION gallery, London and ‘80ºN’ (2014) at QUAD Gallery in Derby. In 2017 they exhibited in several group shows in London: 'Enter through the Headset' at Gazelli Art House, 'Strangelands' at Collyer Bristow Gallery, ’Splintered Binary’ at Gossamer Fog and ‘Now Play This’ at Somerset House. Nominated for a British Academy of Film & Television Arts (BAFTA) the duo are recipients of several awards: a Henry Moore Foundation New Commission, a National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts (NESTA) Award and in 2015 they won the Lumen Gold Prize. Gibson is the Creative Fellow at Centre for Dance Research at Coventry University. The artists live and work in London.
For further information on Gibson / Martelli: www.gibsonmartelli.com
Exhibition runs: 21st April – 13th May, 2018
Friday – Sunday 12.00 – 6.00pm
