Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard
Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard
In The Video Lounge
Friday, September 4th - Sunday, September 27th, 2009
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard met and began working collaboratively at Goldsmiths, graduating together in 1995. They are perhaps best known for their recreations of cultural and art historical events and documents. Theirs is an enquiry into the mechanics of liveness, repetition, reception and recollection.
They have pioneered the understanding of re-enactment within contemporary visual art, from The World Won’t Listen, their first ‘ready-made’ live project in 1996 to their critically acclaimed A Rock ‘N’ Roll Suicide (1998), a painstakingly faithful re-staging of David Bowie’s final performance as Ziggy Stardust 25 years after the original event. More recently their film File under Sacred Music (2003) recreated a videotape of the legendary performance by The Cramps at Napa State Mental Institute. They have the timing and insight to key into the wider cultural concerns of society. Their universal yet personal strategies play out ideas of memory, performance and the mediated image in a challenging and highly accessible way.
Since 2005 Forsyth & Pollard have been producing an ongoing series re-working video and performance art of the 60’s and 70’s, such as Walking After Acconci (Redirected Approaches), a re-working of Vito Acconci’s Walk-Over (1973). They worked closely with Plan B, a young MC, to update the script and re-shoot the video liberally adopting the style and aesthetic of urban music video. In 2007 for Jarvis Cocker’s Meltdown Festival they recreated Bruce Nauman’s Art Make-Up (1968) as Kiss My Nauman, replacing the artist with Dressed To Kill, the word’s longest running Kiss tribute band.
During the 2006 Liverpool Biennial Forsyth & Pollard presented one of their most ambitious projects to date, Silent Sound, commissioned by A Foundation. Drawing on psychological and parapsychological research, this uniquely emotive experience attempted to explore the mind’s susceptibility to subliminal suggestion. The work features an original score by Jason Pierce from the band Spiritualized and was re-presented at Art Basel Miami Beach in 2007 where it was described as “one of the fair’s biggest word-of-mouth hits” by the New York Times. Further developing this body of work, in 2009 they were commissioned by the BFI Gallery, Southbank to produce Radio Mania: An Abandoned Work. The project takes the form of a multi-screen 3D video installation with ambisonic 3D sound and a cast including Kevin Eldon, Caroline Catz Terrence Hardiman and Fenella Fielding.
Since 2008 Forsyth & Pollard have been working on a number of projects with Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds. They have directed the promo videos for the critically acclaimed album Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! and produced a series of fourteen 40 minute films titled Do you love me like I love you to accompany the comprehensive 2009 re-issue of the band’s influential catalogue.
Their work is regularly exhibited internationally and features in several major collections around the world including the Tate Gallery, London and the Arts Council Collection.
