SWEDENBORG HOUSE This is the EIDOPHUSIKON I created during my residency at Swedenborg House 2023-24. It is a replica and reimagining of the iconic EIDOPHUSIKON invented by P.J. de Loutherbourg (painter, stage designer and alchemist) in 1781. This EIDOPHUSIKON is, like Loutherbourg's, a moving image theatre of special effects, sensations, and moods rather than narratives. In the show Scenes from a Journey of a Soul, scenography made of paper, acrylic, found objects, wood and clay create worlds - from the very real standing stones at Stanton Moor to the Afterlife, heaven, Hell and the Divine. Five different artists joined me in creating the scenography for the Eidophusikon. Each created a purpose-made image set, and I transformed them into scenographic panels. Takatsuna Mukai composed the music and also played live. Artists involved: Liane Lang; Natasha Redina; Nazir Tanbouli; Shannon Rakochy; Marwan Elgamal; Anna Chiarini. Jagoda Kamov provided creative direction for the performance. diz_qo assisted with lighting. Mark Fairhurst (Bosco Designs) built the theatre structure.
IMAGINARY MOVIE POSTERS
Kottishop Gallery, Berlin
You can look at art through the eyes of a filmmaker; and you can look at film through the lens of art history. In my exhibition Bon Collage I presented digital collages where i reimagined classic paintings as movies and made the movie posters to promote them.
"AIRING THE LAUNDRY"
installation conception Gillian McIver; installation drawings by Anna Chiarini
commissioned by the British Foreign Office / PSVI Film Festival / BFI
The installation referenced the key theme of the event, which was convened by Angelina Jolie in her capacity as a UNHCR Special Envoy
, to call attention to and prevent, sexual violence in refugee and conflict zones. Our piece addressed violence, shame
and stigma.
part of the Prospero's Library book installation (touring exhibtion)
The Earth Book (detail)
ANOTHER WAY OF LOOKING AT LANDSCAPE, Studio75 London
Analogue photography. Analogue is different to digital. You don’t get to see the photos till they are printed. You have to physically touch them and move them around with your hands to think them over. Take the "standard landscape” of mountains + sky. What happens when you arrange them differently? This is a project about looking at photos, their arrangements and inter-relationships.
OFFSHORE video installation, site specific audiovisual projection.
Former Harland and Wolff shipyard, Belfast. This video was filmed inside the derelict drawing offices of the former Harland and Wolff shipyard, the very rooms where the Titanic and other great ships were designed. Behind is the remains of the slipway where the ships launched.The film was then re-edited and composited with archival footage from the great age of shipping, and combined with an aural collage, and then projected back into the Harland and Wolff space.
SAILS and A HISTORY IN 6 VOLUMES.
Book Art.
This site specific project was part of a 2 year summer residency in Kronstadt, a naval base island off the coast of St Petersburg, Russia.
FRAMING THE CITY.
Prague. Site specific
Framing the City is a project in which golden frames are set up in urban spaces to invite the passerby to view the urban environment and the objects or activities in it in a new way. In Prague, the focus was on the Smetanovo Embankment, a beauty spot with a fantastic view of Hradčany and Prague Castle. But in recent years, the embankment has been increasingly the site of choking traffic, and nobody walks there now.
LIGHTEN UP, Wysing Arts Cambridge.
Light, cages, objects.
Lighten Up was a site specific project tin the ground of Wysing Arts in midwinter. The rural Cambridge site was lit up into a fairytale world of lanterns filled with strange, odd and often disturbing objects and images.
C8H10N4O2 / C12H22O11 (Caffeine and Sugar)
Batteriefabrik, Factory-Berlin
A homage to the coffee break; this was part of the large scale exhibition: Helder der Arbeit, art in old factories in the former industrial district of Obershoeneweide, Berlin. It forms part of my longer term engagement with the Oberschoeneweide district, which involves, films, video art and photography.
LOST (RAILWAY STATION)
Poema Vremenyi project, Nizhny Novgorod Russia
Object installation with film (The River) on monitor.
Floodplain of Time was a site-responsive art-action in an abandoned electricity-generating plant and surrounding area on the banks of the River Oka. Stills from The River are below
A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE 20TH CENTURY
video wall installed in former Natwest bank vault London
MIR GEHT'S GUT / I FEEL GOOD
light, video, objects and sound. A site specific project in a derelict shopping parade, Oberschoenewide, Berlin.
right , Stretcher and Unbekannt / Unknown. AV installations, tramshed,
Weimar Germany Collaboration with Julian Ronnefeldt and Pearl Gluck.
No empty place ...
video and slide projection with sound, Stoke on Trent.
The site was a beautiful old pottery awaiting re-development, where its original use would be eradicated forever. It was the home of J H Weatherby & Sons Pottery. NO EMPTY PLACE was an audio-video piece that explored the pottery's past and present, presided over by the spectral vision of Josiah Wedgwood himself.
"Thames -Oka Project" AV projection with performance (collaboration with Dirizhable)
THE DEVIL IS RIGHT BEHIND YOU
The Old Colosseum, London
Photographic slide installation with objects
A camera-led exploration of Mikhail Bulgakov's former Moscow flat formed the basis for this site specific piece. The slide show was installed in the decaying Victorian splendor of a former music hall in East London. It refers to the ball scene in The Master and Margarita, where Margarita goes to the demon's ball with Woland, the head devil. A second excursion to the site made a few years later, resulted in the film THE HOUSE ON SADOVAYA STREET
interconnections - projection installation in a tent in the grounds of former naval base buildings in Kronstadt, Russia
