22 Feb 2011

Juliette Blightman at International Project Space, Birmingham

International Project Space presents 'A Year With No Head', a newly commissioned installation by Juliette Blightman.

Blightman uses film, performance and installation in ways that draw our attention to the processes of viewing framed by the gallery space; often described as engaging in a form of 'romantic conceptualism', her mixed-media installations typically comprise economical arrangements of familiar domestic objects which invite viewers to spend time with the work and shape their own narratives from these components. Her ongoing series of three-minute 16mm films made since 2007, each shot at 3pm in various domestic interiors, can be seen as a notional starting point for much of her work which celebrates the incidental and the sentimental.

The exhibition centres on a large-scale drawing by Blightman, one of a new series in which the artist sketches out remembered images from her previous installations, their faint pencil marks playing with elisions in her memory. Hung on the wall and lit by a reading lamp resting on a table, the drawing's scale and illumination, as well as the way in which a carefully positioned bench encourages viewers to sit and watch the image, engages visitors in a proto-filmic mode of viewing that imparts a uncertain temporality to the image. A record player connected to a motion sensor plays the Blue Orchids' song 'A Year With No Head' as visitors enter the space, providing a notional soundtrack to the cinematic arrangement. Like her films, Blightman's spare choreography of sound and object opens up a space within which various narratives might be projected. As in previous work, Blightman is interested in examining the subjectivity of 'mental space' and the transformations of information that occur in any process attempting to articulate it.

As part of the work, Blightman will produce a small printed publication containing various texts written by the artist over a period of several months. The writing moves between stream-of-consciousness observations and more personal reminiscences, its wayward nature mirroring the open-endedness of the installation itself.

Juliette Blightman (b. 1980) lives and works in Farnham and Berlin. Recent solo exhibitions include 'the day grew dark', Künstlerhaus, Stuttgart; 'an hour', Michael Benevento, Los Angeles (both 2010); 'Tomorrow then', Hotel, London (2009); 'so much better than last year', Galerie Giti Nourbakhsch, Berlin; 'Nought to Sixty', ICA, London (2008). Recent group exhibitions include 'one fine morning in may…', GAK, Bremen (2010); and 'Silberkuppe', Staatlichen Kunsthalle, Baden Baden (2009).

To accompany the exhibition Blightman will also produce a new limited edition work, which will be on-sale at the gallery and from the website.

www.internationalprojectspace.org

This exhibition is supported by The Elephant Trust

International Project Space is supported by Arts Council England and Birmingham City University