TestBed 1: Residencies
RELLA, 2010
Michael Curran and Lucy Gunning
Upper Gallery 1 & Canteen Gallery 2
23 March - 11 April
Tuesday - Sunday 11am - 5pm
On-Site Residencies open to the public
An ongoing conversation brings Michael Curran and Lucy Gunning together for their first collaboration. RELLA is a hook, a mode of play, hazarding, shuffling time zones, past present future vibrate as one. The term is a fracturing of the myth Barbarella in which the weight of the name takes flight by dropping its elephantine prefix. The artists are working from zero - seeing what can happen in the space through experimental and investigative studio practice.
RELLA is emerging tentatively and cumulatively, it is a process navigating the peculiarities of Time.
During this period the artists will spend the first week creating an environment in the Upper Gallery - making props, provisional sculpture - while alongside they run material of different registers, YouTube edits, simultaneous screenings of films, moving image and audio loops which generate resonances and ruptures. Roger Vadim’s cult film Barbarella lies within, as a corpse waiting to be reborn by moving beyond its limits. The artists see all moving image as time travel and are interested in what it means to reclaim or retrieve something - how many things arrive from the past, somehow ahead of now. They look for a hybrid form.
Visitors are welcome to view the artists at work and will later be invited to participate in RELLA.
The residency will culminate in a series of events to be announced shortly, including an Empathy Workshop, Knitting A Sea Of Consciousness Circle, A Culminating Day & Night of Screenings & Performances.
Three week low impact work out in space.
MC and LG
TestBed 1 is produced as part of Beaconsfield’s curatorial mentoring scheme for emerging artist-curators. Mentees: Dafna Talmor and Joseph Walsh. Beaconsfield is the central London site dedicated to providing a critical space for creative enquiry.
Beaconsfield Commissions 2010