Rosalind Nashashibi 10 Sept — 1 Nov 2009 Written by: Vicky Carmichael & Chloë Sylvestre www.ica.org.uk/education ICA Education What We Do: Programme: Artist Led Projects: Our programme The Fox Reading Room: The Fox includes artist-led workshops with Reading Room is a resource space Our dynamic, artist-led Education schools and innovative collaborations providing artist-selected publications Programme provides opportunities for between artists and community groups. and related material to accompany schools, families and community our visual arts programme. groups to engage in creative ways Teachers Packs: These are available with the ICA’s exhibitions. The gallery with each exhibition and include exhi- ICA Learning is focused on creating is open for school visits between bition notes, suggested discussion points opportunities for exploration and 10am and 12pm, Monday – Friday, and and activities for your visit, how to prepare discussion, providing participants is five minutes walk from Charing before attending the exhibition and with the tools and assurance to Cross Station. proposed activities for the classroom. become informed spectators, confident participators and inspired This pack is geared towards Insets: The ICA offers professional creators. secondary school students pursuing development sessions for teachers as Key Stages 3, 4 and 5. Teachers may an opportunity to meet with artists The Fox Reading Room - situated off find it useful to visit the exhibitions and gallery staff, and discuss how the bar and café area and adjacent to before bringing a group. If you would best to incorporate contemporary art the ICA’s lower gallery, is our new like to plan a trip to the ICA, get in into young people’s education. resource space providing artist- touch and find out how we can meet selected publications and related the needs of your group. Schools Mailing List: Keep up to material to accompany our visual arts date with the exciting education programme. Our new space also Contact projects, events and workshops provides learning resources for Vicky Carmichael, Education Assistant happening at the ICA by signing up for teachers and educators linking our Phone: +44 (0)20 7766 1458 our mailing list. exhibitions to the national curriculum. Email: [email protected] ICA, The Mall, London SW1Y 5AH Teachers Previews: These private The Fox Reading Room was made possible by the views are dedicated to education generous support of the Edwin Fox Foundation For more information and to view our resources and offer ideas for your archive of previous learning activities, pupils’ visit to the ICA. Come as a please visit: teacher or as yourself to enjoy a www.ica.org.uk/learning relaxing evening in the gallery. 2 3 Exhibition Concept: This first major survey exhibition by London-based artist Rosalind Nashashibi, presents gallery-based installations of her five 16mm films from the last four years, for which Nashashibi has since established a strong international reputation, and includes an ambitious new work alongside examples of her photographic output. Nashashibi was last shown at the ICA in 2003, when she was the award winner in Beck’s Futures, Her work is influenced by cinematic history, including the legacy of ethnographic film, and pursues an interest in myth, voyeurism and portraiture, using intuitive and experimental filmic structures. Born in Croydon, UK, in 1973, artist Nashashibi graduated from Glasgow School of Art in 2000. Her solo exhibitions include: Presentation House, Vancouver (2008); and Chisenhale Gallery, London (2007). Her group exhibitions include: Manifesta 7, Trent o (2008); Scotland & Venice, 52nd Venice Biennale (2007); and Beck’s Futures, ICA, London (2003, winner). Nashashibi also has a collaborative practice with the artist Lucy Skaer. Their solo exhibitions include: Tate Britain, London (2008); and CAC Brétigny (2008). Their group exhibitions include: 5th Berlin Biennale (2008). The exhibition has been developed by the ICA with Bergen Kunsthall, Norway, and the latter will present the exhibition in November-December 2009. It is accompanied by issue three Roland (the magazine of the ICA’s visual art programme), as well as the first retrospective publication on Nashashibi’s work, which will include texts by Dieter Roelstraete and Martin Herbert. The catalogue is being produced by the ICA and Bergen Kunsthall in collaboration with Ontario College of Art and Design, Ontario. Rosalind Nashashibi is Rosalind Nashashibi, Jack Straw’s Castle, 2009 production still. Photograph by Will Martin represented by doggerfisher, Edinburgh. Courtesy doggerfisher, Edinburgh 4 5 In Rehearsal Exhibits In Rehearsal (2009) is a new series of over a hundred photographs taken during a rehearsal in Berlin, of a work by Tilman Hecker composed from fragments of The solo exhibition by London-based artist Rosalind Nashashibi is the most Mozart operas, and are accompanied by a sound recording of the same event. comprehensive presentation of her work yet, presenting 16mm films from the The notion of rehearsal is very important to the artist, who is interested in what last four years alongside examples of her photographic output. is known in the theatrical world as ‘physicalisation’ — whereby people are The galleries display a large span of Nashashibi’s work dating back to her transformed into characters. residency in New York in 2005 (Eyeballing) to her most recent work commissioned by the ICA in 2009 for this very exhibition (Jack Straw’s Castle), Although Nashashibi is best known for her films, her works on paper and displays a range of film as well as photographic work by the artist. — which include collages as well as photographs — draw attention to ideas The lower gallery has two photographic series as well as a trio of short, inter- and images that recur within her practice, and which can appear as referring connecting film works, including Eyeballing (2005) which juxtaposes scenes of links for the viewer. New York policemen with the anthropomorphic faces that Nashashibi’s camera finds in the physical fabric of their city. The upper gallery screens Nashashibi’s Footnote two most recent films, including Jack Straw’s Castle (2009), her most ambitious Footnote (2008). This one-minute film is another piece involving sequences work to date. The latter uses footage shot in and around a public park, staged, but this time by the Bayrles and it is Helke Bayrle who takes centre interlacing shots from real life - including sequences shot in a cruising area - stage. The latter is sitting up in bed, reading a magazine, and when her eyes with highly theatrical scenarios involving a cast of non-actors. drop to the bottom of the page — to read a footnote — the sequence is interrupted by the unexpected image of an ornamental garden frog, as if to show the viewer what Helke is possibly referring to. Like the transition from main text to footnote, this cut suggests a jump between different levels of reality — a recurring theme in Nashashibi’s work. Bachelor Machines Part 2 Bachelor Machines Part 2 (2007) is a double projection film: on one screen two of the artist’s works are projected in sequence (Eyeballing, along with Park Ambassador, 2004); the other shows excerpts from Kluge’s Artists Under the Big Top: Perplexed (1968) and footage of Nashashibi’s own restaging of Kluge’s scenes using the artist Thomas Bayrle and his wife Helga as her actors. Bayrle equally provides a Faustian voiceover referring to the catholic rosary as man’s first machine. In this, Nashashibi draws a parallel between this idea and the physical mechanism of the film projectors in the gallery; the work beginning to realise itself as a meditation machine. The artist’s disparate interests are Rosalind Nashashibi, Footnote, 2007, 16mm film. Courtesy doggerfisher, Edinburgh drawn together in a single visual point, forming its own cyclical and poetic logic. 6 7 Eyeballing Eyeballing (2005) signified a sea change in Nashashibi’s style of filmmaking. Moving away from the documentary mode of the artist’s previous film work, it indicated a turn toward the anthropomorphic, the mythic and the abstract. Finding faces within the cityscape of New York – in shop fronts, fire hydrants and floorboards – Eyeballing indicates her interest in the transformative properties of the camera ‘eye’. Interspersed with exterior shots of the New York Police Department, the faces of the off-duty cops are juxtaposed with the anthropomorphic faces of the city, creating a filmic collage portrait. Nashashibi’s ICA exhibition concentrates on this later period, in which her works have become more intuitive, and more experimental in their filmic structure. Abbeys Abbeys (2006) A series of monumental black and white images of crumbling church interiors, inverted by the artist to reveal anthropomorphic shapes as explored in Eyeballing. The Prisoner The Prisoner (2008) is based on Chantal Akerman’s film La Captive (2000), and extends Nashashibi’s exploration of vision and control. In this piece Nashashibi’s camera follows a woman through an anonymous interior and out onto London’s Southbank Centre. Using a single filmstrip looped through two film projectors, the image and sound of the woman’s clicking heels are constantly out of synch, and the observer is caught in an endless, disorientating pursuit. Jacks Straw’s Castle Jacks Straw’s Castle (2009). The final film in the exhibition was specially commissioned by the ICA and Bergen Kunsthall. It is an intuitive and highly visual work interlacing shots from real life – including sequences showing men cruising – with staged scenarios involving a cast of non-professional actors. Jack Straw’s Castle articulates the dream space of cinema, in which camera and desire conspire to bring about a metamorphosis. Rosalind Nashashibi, Abbey 1, 2006 black and white photograph. Courtesy doggerfisher, Edinburgh 8 9 BEFORE EXhibition: Themes and Activities: • Make a list of 3 photographs you like and try to describe why that is.