Anderson & Low’s FIRST EVER video art installation
CIRCUS
Anderson and Low
Sat 16 January - Sun 11 April 2010
The Lowry, Salford Quays
Internationally acclaimed fine art photographers Anderson and Low present their first ever filmed art installation, Motion, especially created as part of their major new exhibition, Circus, which has just opened at The Lowry. To see an extract from Motion, visit www.thelowry.com/circus
Meticulously executed and a highly stylised aesthetic, this video fits seamlessly alongside their photography, expanding the artistic range and language used within the exhibition. Comprising of three film loops showing stunning footage in a continuously varying combination on three different screens, the videos show exquisite movement by Pasha, an aerial silk performer. This breakthrough piece encourages the viewer to consider the relationship between performers’ own physicality and power, the seemingly impossible exertions of their art and the tools used in performance.
The first new exhibition of The Lowry’s tenth anniversary year, Circus also celebrates the twentieth anniversary of Jonathan Anderson & Edwin Low’s ongoing collaboration. This large scale exhibition of over 30 pieces of work has been curated and designed specifically around the display space of the Promenade gallery space at The Lowry. This is the first major showing of Anderson & Low’s first figurative colour series, a radical development in the artists’ studies of the relationship between the body, costume, performance and identity.
The subjects are members of an international circus company that performs at Blackpool Pleasure Beach, shot in 2006 & 2008. These colour photographs depict performers photographed in their stage costumes and make-up in two related series – Portraits and Performance.
Portraits examines the duality of the performer and the performance. These performers are dressed in their traditional costume but removed from their conventional performing environment and placed amongst the classic amusement park rides. Dressed to entertain, the subjects are in a location incongruous to their personae. This contradiction creates a tension in the image that evokes a sense of dislocation and estrangement in the viewer.
Performance depicts the troupe in the more conventional environment of the stage.
The power, strength, beauty and skill of the performers is revealed and lends the composition a harmonious balance, focusing the viewers’ attention on the powerful
relationship between the performer and performance.
“Circus acts as a blink of a memory, a flashback to childhood or a summation of thoughts remembered into a structure on which we happily climb and clamber”
(Laura Noble: introduction to Circus by Anderson & Low, 2008)
Anderson and Low describe how they approach their work. “we spend a lot of time both on the planning and execution of every artistic concept. We are fascinated by people so our portraits are very much looking inside a person’s character - we love to try to show what we find inside people’s souls. The real key to a good portrait is the communication with the subject. Circus performers have to be very disciplined and determined. But we think that inside they can be quite melancholy. We want to capture this strange mixture of hard work, artistry, happiness and sadness, and we think that this is the essence of their inner world. They have this inner mystery that we show in the pictures, and this is because of the close dialogue that we develop with people that we photograph. In these images we are exploring the relationship between body, performance, costume and identity.”
Anderson and Low are interested in the internal process, the preparation, training and characterisation by the subject. They bring together costume and identity with insight, creating photographs with introspective elements.
Anderson and Low add, “From muscular beauty to melancholy sadness, we are celebrating the human condition captured in simplicity with a range of human emotion and conditions in these surreal surroundings.”
Circus was originally showcased at Paris Photo, 2007, and in London, 2008, in conjunction with The Photographers Gallery, London. The exhibition at The Lowry will be the largest public display of this work to date. Anderson and Low’s previous work includes portraiture, nudes, architectural studies, abstract images, reportage, landscape, and highly disciplined studio-based images.
Their work has been exhibited worldwide and resides in many public and private collections and museums. These include Tate Modern, London; The Victoria & Albert Museum, London; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the High Museum of Art, Atlanta; the National Portrait Gallery (England); the National Portrait Gallery (Australia) and The Worcester Museum, Massachusetts. Recently their architectural photographs Abstractions have been developed into brand new works for the solo exhibition Chrysalis in Dallas, Texas. Six monographs have been published: Athletes and Gymnasts (Twin Palms, 2002) and Athlete/Warrior (Merrell, 2005), Chrysalis (Light & Sie, 2007), Circus (Lucky Panda Press, 2008) and Champions (Lucky Panda Press, 2008).
In April this year, the portfolio X Prints, consisting of 10 Platinum-palladium prints of images taken from the series Athletes and Gymnasts were acquired by the Tate Modern and by the Victoria & Albert Museum. Most recently, in July, prints from the series Chrysalis were acquired by the Victoria & Albert Museum and also by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
Posted on Friday, 22 January 2010 under Press Galleries Press