Stanley Picker Gallery

“In art terminology Dagmar Glausnitzer-Smith is basically an installation-maker though more by osmosis than calculated adoption of the genre. For her, the appropriation of space or of a specific place as integral to a constructed metaphor follows naturally from the fact that we are always somewhere in particular where we live, where we work (and they are probably much the same for her). We move constantly back and forth between our domestic base and a range of destinations, some of which are local and habitual, others more distant, infrequent or exotic. But the journeys, in both prospect and retrospect, give shape and a veneer of purpose to our lives; they also confer a fragile sense of security. This abstract map of movement within a social/cultural frame of reference is offered as both the extension and the expression of identity; its shapes and characters are her subject matter.”

Tony Carter
Director of City and Guilds Art College London 2003

Selected Exhibitions:
2006 Seven of Eglise and Eru title:Number JB 339 (vermeidbare Stoversuche) exhibition and live performance, Motorenhalle, Dresden; Transit Station Edinburgh (two days continuous Action in Art in Action) Ocean Terminal, Edinburgh
2005 Transit Sation Berlin (two days continuous Action in Art in Action) Gebauer Hofe, Berlin
2000 Agglutinates of Pleasure and Playing in Workskin with Sikablock M450 live performance and projection, 291 Gallery, London

“At first, unable to cope, the mind and the body retreat, withdrawing from the trauma. The weight of this burden is oppressive. There is no solace. The psyche is scarred. A barrier is erected for protection, imprisoning the trauma. The mind cannot deny what has happened, but rather than torment the psyche, it seeks refuge in silence. Isolation and seclusion envelop the physical environment. The body resides in captivity, enclosing itself in a regulated existence. Contained in this recess, memory remains dormant, awaiting interruption. In time, the mind and the body decay, revealing the indelible.

Shona Illingworth’s new video and sound installation, The Watch Man, produced in dialogue with memory researcher Martin A. Conway, weaves together the physical and the psychological, creating an immersive environment that reflects the context of the work. Her installations speak to her interest in depicting psychological realms in response to the physical environments that circumscribe and shape that relationship. She is drawn to those whose voice is often silenced, both inflicted and self-imposed, voices that reflect societal expulsions and conflicting zones of engagement. This territory is harsh and unforgiving, bound by codes and actions used in self-preservation. She seeks to define these boundaries, transgressing their limitations and restrictions, allowing the voices to be heard. It is this collision of the mind and the body that weaves throughout her work.

In The Watch Man, a large circular projection screen is suspended above an installed floor that has been painted red. The installation activates the gallery space, using new sound technology that turns the floor into a speaker resonating with sound. The sound encompasses the space, sweeping underfoot as it moves from the video speakers, situated overhead, across the floor, and back to the video. The sounds are both familiar and abstract, shifting from the reassuring to the threatening. The listener/viewer walks over the sound, effectively embodying the work, and becoming part of this encapsulated world.

The importance of the frame in The Watch Man cannot be overlooked. The visual representation of the circular screen with its enclosed space sets the formal structure and mirrors the optical focus of the work. The watch man’s visual apparatus of eye glass and magnifying glass are used to facilitate the precision of his craft. These seeing devices shield the eye, becoming barriers or obstructions to the eye as a memory portal. The views are tightly framed, obscured and magnified, corresponding with the watch man’s psychological state.

The Watch Man suspends time. It records the lapses in time when the past interrupts the present with disturbing traumatic memories. Like a watchman guarding an entry and exit portal, Illingworth’s watch man labors over time in an attempt to control its passage. Although the watch man’s craft enables him mechanically to fix time, he is unable to suppress the captivity of the past. While the pendulum measures time, the watch man shelters himself in the controlled and the habitual. A world weighted in time.”

Rhonda Corvese, Curator
Extracts from an exhibition text for The Watch Man, 2007

Selected Exhibitions:
2007 The Watch Man solo exhibition, Dilston Grove, London; Interaccess Toronto, with artist monograph; Central Asian Project group exhibition, Cornerhouse, Manchester and SPACE, London, touring to Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgystan
2006 Strangers with Angelic Faces group exhibition, Akbank Sanat, Istanbul and SPACE, London
2001/2 PILOT solo exhibition, Gymnasium Gallery, Berwick upon Tweed, UK touring to Art Gallery of Newfoundland, Canada. Related short film ‘Sounding’ for Channel 4 Television
2001 Passing solo exhibition, Hayward Gallery, London, Turnaround commission

“The painted surface itself has become a pulsating patchwork of intricately interlocking colored shapes””units of sheer sensory impulse whose value demanded to be experienced haptically as much as optically. Ornate, flamboyantly twisting and swelling forms derived both from the observation of biological forms and nature and from studies of the way such forms have historically been translated into decorative schemata, for example in art nouveau, counterpointed determinedly flat color. Now, protuberant tendrils of color, twining biomorphic strands, stand out against a return of the monochrome ground, and in some cases these patches of color have given way to simple colored outlines.

In essence, Temin-Vergez has come to the realization that there is greater pictorial power to be derived from working neither with a classic figure/ground dichotomy in which self-contained shapes can be more or less clearly distinguished nor with the allover, in which this dichotomy is done away with, but rather with this more ambiguous situation in which a profusion of small-scale elements, somewhat elongated so that they seem at a halfway point between being shapes and lines, agglutinate into these diffuse yet not allover configurations that are, as the artist herself puts it, “forms without form, shapes without shape.

There is undoubtedly something seductive about these formless forms that remind us so strongly of things that we find decorative and beautiful but they harbor a subliminal sense of threat as well, because there is something inherently unnatural underlying their hallucination of naturalness. You want to keep your eye on them, at once for delight and from mistrust, until you finally can’t tell the two feelings apart.”

Selected Exhibitions:
2007 Castellon International Painting Prize 3rd edition Castellon County Council and touring to Madrid ARCO, Spain; two person show, Marksman Gallery, Reading; London Assembly Academy Royale des Beaux Arts, Brussels
2006 Ebb & Flow touring show Raid Project, Los Angeles; Abstract Mode Contemporary Art Project, London