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Internationally acclaimed artists Jane and Louise Wilson
are known for their film and photographic works, often
exploring states of consciousness and the experience of
place. This summer a series of large-scale photographs
from their ongoing investigation into the 1986 Chernobyl
nuclear disaster premieres at the John Hansard Gallery.
The exhibition also features a number of other works,
many previously unseen in the UK.
Atomgrad (Nature Abhors a Vacuum), 2010 is a
suite of eight photographic prints depicting deserted
interiors from the abandoned town of Pripyat, situated
within the 30km wide Exclusion Zone around the site of
the disaster. Books remain on shelves and desks, bed frames
remain intact and once-exquisite parquet flooring lies
on the ground like rubble. A yardstick appears within
each image and is a recurring motif throughout the exhibition.
These objects of measurement – functional yet obsolete
– act as a marker of scale and order, alluding to
the tensions between association and analysis, memory
and material fact.
Top and middle: Jane and Louise
Wilson, Untitled (Nature Abhors a Vacuum), 2010
Bottom: Oddments Room IV (A Canoe Voyage up the Minnay
Sotor), 2008
© Copyright the artists. Courtesy 303 Gallery and
Helga de Alvear Gallery
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Other works featured include two from the photographic
series The Oddments Room, 2008-9, made in an
antiquarian bookshop, alongside ready-mades Altogether,
2010 and Measure Obsolescere, 2010, through which
yardsticks punctuate the gallery space, and new photographs
from a recent work Face Scripting: What Did the Building
See?, 2011. Jane and Louise Wilson were born in Newcastle
and currently live and work in London. They began working
together in 1989 and have exhibited in major galleries
throughout the world. They were nominated for the Turner
Prize in 1999.
Jane and Louise Wilson’s work in Chernobyl is commissioned
and produced by
Forma Arts and Media, in association with
John Hansard Gallery,
Dundee Contemporary Arts
and The
Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester.
Research has been supported by
British Council Ukraine,
The Center
for Urban History of Central East Europe
and the Visual
Culture Research Center, University of Kiev.
Related links:
Wikipedia:
Chernobyl Disaster
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Gallery: Jane and Louise Wilson |
