Erika Tan, The Syntactical Impossibility of Approaching with A Pure Heart, 2008
Murmur
Curated by Creative [SIN}ergy member Eliza Tan
Featuring: Creative [SIN}ergy member Erika Tan and Anita di Bianco, Aoife Collins, Trong G. Nguyen, Kate Pickering,Tintin Wulia with Performances by Lynn Lu, and Matthew MacKisack with Jeffrey Baker.
A low, indistinct and continuous sound, murmuring evokes the telling of stories or rumours that conjure powerful mental pictures. Murmuring otherwise connotes an endless babble of visual and verbal information - the point where language fails and meaning collapses.
Underscoring mechanisms of verbal imagination and visual enactment, linguistic rupture and the dissolution of the image, murmur explores fiction-making as a means by which to critically reorder the data of experience, frameworks of memory and limits of perception.
The artists in the exhibition have mined sources ranging from folklore and literature, to history and cultural theory, selectively reiterating and placing ownership over information, language and images that otherwise slip into an anonymous stream of murmuring. The artworks raise enquiries on existing social narratives, rationalities and systems of belief as the artists attempt to spin new fables from borrowed plots by deploying fiction as an evaluative strategy; a blank space from which to recall, to speak and to perform.
Featuring newly commissioned titles and works previously not shown in the UK, the project brings together video, installation and sculpture works by Anita di Bianco (US/DE), Aoife Collins (IE), Trong G. Nguyen (US), Kate Pickering (UK), Erika Tan (UK/SG), TinTin Wulia (ID) and live performances by Lynn Lu (UK/SG) and Matthew MacKisack (UK) due to take place on the First Thursday of December.
Erika Tan’s work has evolved from an interest in anthropology and the moving image. Her work is often informed by specific cultural, geographical or physical contexts; exploring different media to create situations that excite, provoke, question, confront and invite comments from the audience.
Murmur
Exhibition curated by Eliza Tan
5 November – 19 December 2010
Private view: Thursday 4 November, 6.30-9.30pm
Waterside Project Space
Unit 8, Waterside
44-48 Wharf Rd
London N1 7UX
Opening times during exhibitions
Wednesdays-Saturdays: 11am-6pm
Sundays: 11am-4pm
