Kihlberg & Henry  Footnotes to a Long Distance Telephone Call
 

Kihlberg & Henry  A Mountain Close Up is Only Rock  video still  2016

16 April - 22 May 2016

For their exhibition Karin Kihlberg & Reuben Henry have invited the Disembodied Voice research group to show new works and host a series of events. The group includes Maia Conran, Patrick Coyle, Karen Di Franco, Kihlberg & Henry, and was formed in 2014 as a format to explore manifestations of the disembodied voice within their own work and in wider culture. The disembodied voice, and its often inevitable re-embodiment in objects other than the original speaking body, are variously reflected in the exhibition and its associated events, from the recorded voice in moving image to its traces in written correspondences and archives.

An accompanying essay by Chris Fite-Wassilak will be available as part of the exhibition.

Kihlberg & Henry's video work A Mountain Close Up is Only Rock forms a digitalogical dissection of deceased architect Jørn Utzon. Narrated by a series of unfixed voices in combination with an associative flow through Utzon's digital footprint, the video envisions an obscure afterlife in the traces of the architect's mythical house on Mallorca, its geographic location kept private by the architect and its evidence on the internet scant.

Patrick Coyle will be posting a series of items to Danielle Arnaud which will be on display for the duration of the exhibition. Envelope Opening for Closing Event will deliver the promise of its title on the final day of the exhibition, when Coyle will deliver a performance in which he opens these items and uses them as a script.

Karen Di Franco will present I Decide Not to Operate Without Direct Communication. A postcard from Lee Lozano located in the archive of writer and critic Barbara Reise is taken as a starting point to discuss the temporalities of the archive. The philosopher Karen Barad has described the archive as trace rather than repository - as an assemblage of interactive phenomena. By articulating documents, the presentation will explore such interactivities.

In Maia Conran's video work Meat, a film studio lighting rig is repurposed as the protagonist of a scripted psycho-narration. Internal monologues, social desires and multiple selves are revealed through the interface of this character's voices. The glistening, dark presence of the rig is punctured by Youtube-culled footage of the rig's counter-character, Meat.

The Disembodied Voice research group is funded by Arts Council England and Vision Forum.
Kihlberg & Henry’s work A Mountain Close Up is Only Rock is co-commissioned by CANVAS and FACT, supported by Artplayer.tv and Channels Festival.
Furniture generously supplied by Retro Zebra Furniture

Events:

 

Sunday 24 April  4pm - I Decide Not to Operate Without Direct Communication, presentation by Karen Di Franco.

Friday 29 April  6:30pm - John Smith film screening and conversation with Kihlberg & Henry.

John Smith will be screening a series of films followed by a conversation with Kihlberg & Henry about the use of voiceover in his work. John Smith was born in London in 1952 and studied film at the Royal College of Art. Inspired in his formative years by conceptual art and structural film, but also fascinated by the immersive power of narrative and the spoken word, he has developed an extensive body of work that subverts the perceived boundaries between documentary and fiction, representation and abstraction. Often rooted in everyday life, Smith’s meticulously crafted films rework and transform reality, playfully exploring and exposing the language of cinema.

Sunday 22 May  4:30pm - Envelope Opening for Closing Event, performance by Patrick Coyle.

Kihlberg & Henry are artists working with moving image, performance, interdisciplinary research projects and publications. They have had recent solo exhibitions at Fig-2, Institute of Contemporary Arts and Res, London; Artsway, Hampshire; Aspex Gallery, Portsmouth; Gallery Box, Gothenburg, and Danielle Arnaud, London. They have participated in group shows and projects at Camden Arts Centre, London, Eastside Projects, Birmingham, Fundació Miró, Mallorca, Tate Modern and the Hayward Gallery, UK. They won the Great North Run Moving Image Commission in 2012 and were artists in residence at Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge, 2011, Futura, Prague, 2007 and Red Gate Gallery, Beijing, 2006.
Kihlberg & Henry completed a two-year fellowship at the Jan van Eyck Academy, NL in 2011, and are currently coordinating the Disembodied Voice research group supported by Vision Forum and Arts Council England.

 

Patrick Coyle (b. 1983, Hull, UK) is an artist and writer working predominantly with performance and sculpture. His practice considers the difference between sense and nonsense in verbal communication. Often borrowing from the conventions of guided tours and poetry readings, Coyle examines both the supposed authority of the lone orator and the psychological affect of reading aloud on both the listener and the speaker. Coyle completed MFA Art Writing at Goldsmiths, University of London (2010) and BA Fine Art at Byam Shaw, University of the Arts London (2005). He recently delivered performances at El Tercer Lugar, Buenos Aires; Catalyst Arts, Belfast; Van Alen Institute, New York; Global Committee, New York; Tate Modern, London; Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; Nottingham Contemporary; Wellcome Collection, London; ANDOR Gallery, London; Whitechapel Gallery, London, and Spike Island, Bristol (all 2014-16).
Recent exhibitions include: The Place Where He Is Meant To Be Lost, The Third Policeman, New York; Trim Your Tongue, DKUK Salon, Peckham, London; fig-2 28/50 Patrick Coyle & Francesco Pedraglio, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; A Circular, Cubitt Gallery, London; It said, ANDOR Gallery, London.
Coyle is currently a resident at The Hub, Wellcome Collection, London, and a member of The Disembodied Voice research group.

 

Karen Di Franco works as an archivist, a curator, and is currently PhD candidate with Tate Britain and Reading University researching forms, strategies and contexts within artists’ publishing. Recent projects include the exhibitions The sun went in, the fire went out: landscapes in film, performance and text, CHELSEA space (2016), Icons of a Process, Flat Time House (2014) and the development of Book Works online archive and publication Again, A Time Machine (2010-12).
With Ami Clarke she co-organises the New Materialism reading group at Banner Repeater, London and is a member of the Disembodied Voice research group.

 

Maia Conran graduated from the University of West of England, Bristol in 2010 and lives and works in London. She has had solo exhibitions at Kingsgate Workshops, London; Grand Union, Birmingham; Phoenix Gallery, Exeter; and G39, Cardiff and has also been selected for international group exhibitions, screenings and residencies. Her work was published on DVD by Filmarmalade in 2012 and was the subject of a monograph entitled Here is the Yard published by Grand Union in 2014.

 
 

Kihlberg & Henry  A Mountain Close Up is Only Rock  2016  unique slides, x-ray lightbox and sound
photograph by Oskar Proctor

 

Kihlberg & Henry  A Mountain Close Up is Only Rock  2016  unique slides, x-ray lightbox and sound
photograph by Oskar Proctor

 

Kihlberg & Henry  A Mountain Close Up is Only Rock  2016  unique slides, x-ray lightbox and sound
photograph by Oskar Proctor

Maia Conran  Meat  2016  HD video  4'30 minutes
photograph by Oskar Proctor

 

Maia Conran  Meat  2016  HD video  4'30 minutes
photograph by Oskar Proctor

 

Maia Conran  Meat  2016  HD video  4'30 minutes
photograph by Oskar Proctor

 

Patrick Coyle  set up for Envelope Opening For a Closing Event  2016  performance on Sunday 22 May 2016
photograph by Oskar Proctor

 

Patrick Coyle  set up for Envelope Opening For a Closing Event  2016  performance on Sunday 22 May 2016
photograph by Oskar Proctor

 
 

Kihlberg & Henry  A Mountain Close Up is Only Rock  2016  HD video installation with 4.1 sound  13 minutes
photograph by Oskar Proctor

 

Kihlberg & Henry  A Mountain Close Up is Only Rock  2016  HD video installation with 4.1 sound  13 minutes
photograph by Oskar Proctor

 

Kihlberg & Henry  A Mountain Close Up is Only Rock  2016  HD video installation with 4.1 sound  13 minutes
photograph by Oskar Proctor

 

Kihlberg & Henry  A Mountain Close Up is Only Rock  2016  HD video installation with 4.1 sound  13 minutes
photograph by Oskar Proctor

 
 
 
 
                     
 
>home