Mark Ingham, Doppelgänger: USSR Pool, edition: 1, (2004/2005). Photo Leeds Met
The Leeds Met Gallery is showcasing Episode, a new exhibition of lens-based work by nine acclaimed artists, from April 29 to June 2 2006.
It includes photography, video projections and painting and explores how viewers engage with various semi-fictional scenarios.
Each artist produced a series of ‘episodes’, floating installations of white laminated screens that guide, as well as inhibit, the viewer’s movement around the gallery space. The work is designed to play on the senses and produce a dramatic visual and aural experience.
Work by art lecturer and curator Amanda Beech looks at crime and justice narratives in Western film and literature, to examine the relationship between freedom and violence.
Alison Jones instead uses both distorted and three dimensional painting to produce images that reflect the settings of everyday life- including a man urinating up a wall, a woman hiding a bottle of vodka, and a large pile of rubbish-laden bin bags.
Mike Marshall, Gravel (2004). Photo Leeds Met
By comparison, fine art tutor Jasone Miranda Bilbao observes different perspectives of the world using sculpture and photography and art scholar Mike Marshall combines the latter with video and sound to explore how we interact with the immediate world around us.
Other contributing artists include Julie Henry, Mark Ingham, Jaspar Joseph-Lester, Nayan Kulkarni, Giles Perry and freelance curator Mathew Poole.
The exhibition is one in a long line of unconventional offerings at the gallery, which was set up in 1991 to bring cutting edge contemporary and visual performing arts to Leeds.
Episode is also a research initiative, set up to generate critical thinking about lens based artworks. A seminar will be held at the gallery on May 12 2006 to explore how photographic and video images can influence our beliefs.
