Press Release
Abigail Lane Tomorrows World, Yesterdays Fever (Mental Guests Incorporated)
Victoria Miro Gallery, 4 October – 10 November 2001 The exhibition is organized by the Milton Keynes Gallery in collaboration with Film and Video Umbrella
The Victoria Miro Gallery presents a major solo exhibition of work by Abigail Lane. Tomorrows World, Yesterdays Fever (Mental Guests Incorporated) extends her preoccupation with the fantastical, the Gothic and the uncanny through a trio of arresting and theatrical installations which are based around film projections.
Abigail Lane is well known for her large-scale inkpads, wallpaper made with body prints, wax casts of body fragments and ambiguous installations. In these earlier works Lane emphasized the physical marking of the body, often referred to as traces or evidence. In this exhibition Lane turns inward giving form to the illusive and intangible world of the psyche. Coupled with her long-standing fascination with turn-of-the-century phenomena such as séances, freak shows, circus and magic acts, Lane creates a “funhouse-mirror reflection” of the life of the mind.
The Figment explores the existence of instinctual urges that lie deep within us. Bathed in a vivid red light, the impish boy-figment beckons us, “Hey, do you hear me…I’m inside you, I’m yours…..I’m here, always here in the dark, I am the dark, your dark… and I want to play….”. A mischievous but not sinister “devil on your shoulder” who taunts and tempts us to join him in his wicked game. The female protagonist of The Inclination is almost the boy-figment’s antithesis. Emerging from the dawn glow of an ocean shoreline this fragile, ghostly siren entreats us to follow her as she lights her way, slowly up the beach. The film is accompanied by a haunting sound track, composed for Lane by DJ and Producer, Matty Skylab. The more playful The Inspirator features the surreal vision of a panda playing a trumpet in the depths of a forest. The poster declares, “Her mind was a WILDERNESS, her world a WASTELAND and then from nowhere HE RETURNED”. This whimsical and unexpected creative spirit smiles fleetingly on those he favors before disappearing, leaving only the outline of his grin. A glitter ball and mirrored fountain create a magical but unworldly fairground setting to accompany the Inspirator’s celluloid world.
Abigail Lane emerged as part of the Freeze generation when in 1988 she and fellow students such as Damien Hirst, Gary Hume and Sarah Lucas co-organised an exhibition show-casing their own work while students at Goldsmiths’ College. Lane has exhibited extensively in this country and internationally. She recently had a solo show at Andréhn-Schiptjenko, Stockholm and has appeared in group shows such as L’Empreinte at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, Harald Szeeman’s Lyon Biennale and at other major venues such as the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus Ohio, the ICA, Boston, the Hayward Gallery, London, Magasin 3 Konsthall, Stockholm, the Rooseum, Malmö, Sammlung Goetz in Munich and the Kunstmuseum, Wolfsburg. She also exhibited in solo shows at the ICA London and Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Born in 1967, Abigail Lane lives and works in London.
Exhibition Catalogue: Text by Harland Miller and essays by Steven Bode and Stephen Snoddy. Designed by Paul Fryer and Abigail Lane. Edition 1500: 1,400 softbound, 100 hardback, signed with accompanying CD. Prices: Softback £14.99. Hardback £75.00. ISBN 0-9536755-4-8.
For further press information please contact Kathy Stephenson, 020 7 549 0422, [email protected]