Jean-Paul Kelly: That ends that matter

Delfina Foundation announces its exhibition and residency programme in autumn 2016.

Exhibition programme
Delfina Foundation presents the first UK solo exhibition of Canadian artist, Jean-Paul Kelly. Exploring the relationship between materiality and perception, Kelly examines complex associations between found photographs, videos, and sounds from documentaries, photojournalism, and online media streams. By working through these documents, Kelly seeks to illuminate the gap between physical matter and the subjective experience of it in the world.

In this new installation, That ends that matter, Kelly questions documentary practices in UK courtrooms through a new body of work that consists of a three-channel video and works on paper.

In winter 2015, whilst in residence at Delfina Foundation, Kelly attended City of London Magistrates’ Court in Central London for eight weeks as a visitor, during which time he observed the daily events in one courtroom. The UK’s Criminal Justice Act forbids all recording and sketching in court, allowing illustrators to only take notes; Kelly employs this restricted form of recounting as both a structural and poetic device for his work. In a world of ubiquitous image production and access, these courts of law force representations to be made on the basis of abstract observation and memory. That ends that matter elaborates this sense of abstraction to explore the contradictory experiences of transparency and restriction in public institutions.

In That ends that matter, the 12-minute, three-channel video is constructed of a re-enactment of actual events which the artist witnessed in court; photographic material from online image streams used to retell the sensed experience of those events; and a visual music animation where geometric shapes copied from these re-enactments are drawn directly onto the optical soundtrack of 16mm film to produce a score.

As Jean-Paul Kelly explains: “The primary goal of my work is producing a fair account of my experience of the world. My inquiry is not related to redundant claims of indexical truth but rather to the repositioning of artifice, desire, and bias as the material source for realising the form of the work. That ends that matter is an attempt to document a certain form of subjective sense.”

Production of That ends that matter was made possible through funding support of Ontario Arts Council and The Canada Council for the Arts.

With additional research support from the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Kuzuko Trust Award and Delfina Foundation’s family of individual supporters.

Residency programme
This autumn, Delfina Foundation's residencies are focused on open-ended artistic research with the following artists:

Arwa Al Neami (Saudi Arabia)
Supported by Delfina Foundation's family of individual supporters

Rasel Chowdhury (Bangladesh)
​Awarded through Samdani Art Award 2016

Jungki Beak (South Korea)
Supported by SongEun Art & Cultural Foundation

Shadi Habib Allah (Palestine/USA)
Supported by Al Serkal Avenue, A. M. Qattan Foundation, Rana Sadik & Samer Younis, and Charles Asprey

Nader Koochaki (Iran/Spain)
Awarded through MOP Contemporary Art Prize 2015

Hind Mezaina (UAE)
Supported by Maraya Art Centre

Alan Poma (Peru)
Supported by MATE - Museo Mario Testino

Jasmijn Visser (Netherlands)
Supported by Mondriaan Fonds