© Courtesy David Cotterrell
An immersive experience here, as David Cotterrell swaps Sheffield Hallam University (where he is a Fine Art professor) for Southampton’s academic quarter, bringing with him a cinematic portrayal of his journeys to Afghanistan in a series of works galvanising complex technology.
In the Observer Effect, visitors see a projected image of a distant population. The virtual community gradually grows in number and becomes distracted by their gallery onlookers. The uncertainty of their reaction makes for an unnerving sensation, animated by human shadows moving across a desert landscape terrain, seen from the vantage point of what appears to be an overhead drone.
Cotterell worked with the Joint Forces Medical Group in Helmand province, as well as civilian agencies in the northern regions of Afghanistan to inform his project. And in Apparent Horizon – the third strand of the idea – he positions the viewer somewhere between the anxiety of punctuated periods of violence and the “sublime reverie” of the calm in between.
Ending with a grand finale, the abiding themes invite us to contemplate control, observation, the truth of what we see and contradictory perspectives.
- Open 11am-5pm (4pm Saturday, closed Sunday and Monday). Admission free.
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The project intends to create a sense of the disorientation civilians in Afghanistan have had to contend with
© Courtesy David Cotterrell
© Courtesy David Cotterrell
Six-channel displays and generative mobile data projections are among the innovative technological techniques used
© Courtesy David Cotterrell
© Courtesy David Cotterrell
