Susan Collins
Seascape
4 April – 14 June 2009
Opening 4 April, 2-4pm
De La Warr Pavilion
Bexhill-on-Sea
East Sussex
www.susan-collins.net/seascape
A new body of work by British artist Susan Collins combines digital technologies with the classical traditions of English landscape painting to present an extraordinary visual exploration into the natural cycles of tide, time and light.Commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella and De La Warr Pavilion, Seascape consists of a series of gradually unfolding digital seascapes created using imagery captured in real time by webcams installed at five key coastal vantage points between Margate and Portsmouth. Sited at each location for up to a year before the start of the show, the webcams record the endless fluctuations in the light that are a characteristic feature of the English coastline and whose ever-changing nature has attracted painters for generations.
The exhibition will include a series of real-time projections – each showing an image constructed from digital material drawn from the five webcams. Continually collecting this data – from top to bottom and left to right in horizontal bands – these images are constantly generated and renewed pixel by pixel.
A series of digital prints from this bank of material will also be presented as part of the exhibition, whilst a project website features the vast digital archive of webcam imagery amassed over the period of 12 months. www.susan-collins.net/seascape.
Poised, like the sea itself, between unchanging stillness and continuous movement, counterpointing the ongoing motion of the pixel with the endless vigil of the lens staring out to sea, these projections will mark the limits of the visible throughout the day, presenting the viewer with a series of infinitely evolving seascapes.
An exhibition catalogue will be published by Film and Video Umbrella during the course of the show, presenting extensive material from the Seascape archive, alongside essays by Sean Cubitt and Nick Alfrey.
Seascape is commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella and De La Warr Pavilion and is supported by Arts Council England and AHRC.
For more information contact Hannah Barnes at FVU, T: 0207 407 7755, E: hannah@fvu.co.uk or Sally Ann Lycett at De La Warr Pavilion on 01424 229 137 sally.ann.lycett@dlwp.com
Film and Video Umbrella is the UK’s leading commissioning and production agency for artists’ film and video work. For twenty years the organisation has presented an ambitious and engaging programme of contemporary moving image projects, delivered in collaboration with galleries and venues across England. Major commissions of the past decade have included projects by Cory Arcangel, Tacita Dean, Dryden Goodwin, Isaac Julien, Mark Leckey, Gillian Wearing and Jane & Louise Wilson. Film and Video Umbrella is funded by Arts Council England. Visit us at www.fvu.co.uk.
