Lynette Wallworth
Damavand Mountain, Hold: Vessel 1, 2001, Invisible by Night
Produced by Forma in association with the National Glass Centre
17 March-17 June 2007
National Glass Centre,
Contemporary Gallery,
Liberty Way, Sunderland,
SR6 0GL, UK
T: 44 (0)191 515 555
Monday – Sunday 10.00 17.00.
Australian born artist Lynette Wallworth presents three immersive installation works in her first UK solo exhibition. An artist whose practice spans video installation, photography and short film, Wallworth describes her intention as bringing together technological advances and ancient understandings, new media and old practices, electronics and the electricity of human touch.
Wallworth’s work is about the relationship between ourselves and nature, about how we are made up of our physical and biological environments, even as we re-make the world through our activities. Produced by Forma, this exhibition presents a series of immersive installation environments that offer tactile gateways for the viewer.
Damavand Mountain is an elegant and simple video installation based on imagery filmed by Wallworth during an artists residency in Iran in 2004. A series of images track the cycle of a short lived poppy flower, a woman and a snow covered mountain. The movements of the flowers petals, the womans chador and the clouds suggest the impact of invisible forces that shape them daily. Their adjustments to the changing environment evoke a sense of endurance in human nature and nature itself. Through this series of visual metaphors Damavand Mountain presents a poetic and unobtrusive exploration of the global and governmental forces that shape the lives of those in Iran and around the world.
In Hold: Vessel 1, 2001 the visitor is invited to carry a glass bowl into a darkened space and encouraged to catch projected images of underwater life in the bowl. The work explores the immensity of the natural world and our relationship to it. With intimate moments of synchronised light and sound, Hold: Vessel 1, 2001 celebrates minutiae – the microscopic forms of life. Offering a sensation akin to holding life in your hands, the work creates a sense of communal participation as visitors pass the bowl to each other, leaving them with an impression of shared responsibility and hope.
The gently interactive video installation Invisible by Night responds to touch, presenting a projection of a lifesized woman, whose eternal pacing can be quietly interrupted by the viewer. Commissioned originally for The Melbourne Festival 2004 in response to the layered history of the site of Melbourne’s first morgue, the piece explores suffering, the process of grief and loss, and the transient nature of compassion.
This exhibition follows an Arts Council England International Fellowship Residency completed by the artist at the National Glass Centre in 2006. Lynette Wallworth is represented by Forma.
From 9 March 4 June 2007, Wallworths large scale moving image work Evolution of Fearlessness (2006) is presented as part of Turbulence, the 3rd Auckland Triennial. www.aucklandtriennial.com
National Glass Centre is a contemporary cultural venue. Housed in a spectacular glass building situated on the banks of the River Wear it is dedicated to offering its diverse audience an exceptional visitor experience, and promoting the innovative and creative qualities of glass through its exhibition and education programme, glass production facilities and visiting artists studios.
Forma is a creative production agency for ambitious, interdisciplinary contemporary art.
Working closely with artists over extended periods of time, Forma produces, tours and publishes groundbreaking new projects that seamlessly combine diverse media. Its extensive international touring programme, delivered in collaboration with major venues and festivals world-wide, pioneers new hybrid forms of music, visual art, film, new media, dance, theatre and live art.
Forma is supported by Arts Council England
