LOIS ROWE

New Film and Video

Preview: 21 June 2008, 7pm
Exhibition open: 24 June–28 June 2008, 11am–5pm

Transmission Gallery presents new film works by London based artist Lois Rowe. Rowe uses film as a medium for investigations into the formulative structures of artistic practice: practice that takes place both under the immaterial conditions of histories of thought as well as material conditions of histories of power. Her recent short films have made particular and recurring reference to the role of authorial voice in the construction of sound and un-sound narrative spaces and their consequences for a possible viewer.

For her show at Transmission Gallery Rowe will present three new films and curate a screening of historical and contemporary works by other artists.

Mannerism to Mind 2007 is a short documentary style video featuring a market vendor on East Street, London and the narratorial voice of a fictional artist who makes public sculpture in the vicinity. Taking us through his areas of influence the disembodied artist’s voice seems to guide us through the market and surrounding area with the market vendor appearing and re-appearing as main point of interest and protagonist. The authoritative, but not authorial, voice of the artist at first holds closely to the progression of footage we are shown but this apparently natural link between what is shown and what is spoken wavers in and out of synchronicity. As the artist’s voice alludes to physical structures that might effect or place behaviour the camera frames negative shapes around the market trader, as if the artist is directly enclosing him by his verbal drawing. However, periodically the trader re-asserts himself as the more convincing actuality through the virtuosity and idiosyncrasy of his vocal performance. Voice seems to escape and reacquaint itself with identity. The artist’s narrative is interrupted by fragments of the trader’s patter that mirror his own, coincidences that allow the two voices to travel temporarily in tandem- occupying the same space but embodying dissonance. The narrative whole of any articulatory structure, be it documentary or artist’s pronouncement, is made to feel falsely naturalised - a sutured space that may momentarily oppress or repress multiple voices.

Orlando 2008 takes place primarily within a suburban conservatory where a robbery has taken place. Rowe uses the device of the narrative voice investigating the crime scene to consider the qualities of the analytical space of any enquiry- ‘a paranoid and fictional place defined by projections placed upon it.’ Self-aware mirroring of the spaces created by the modern condition of alienated thought is therefore planted into the structural fabric of the film. Occasional discord between this narrative voice and the film image further complicates any unity between the voice and space of enquiry.

Capital 2008 explores the relationship between the ‘gifting’ of the foundation of the Tate and the ‘debt’ that might have been set in motion by this action of Sir Henry Tate, founder of Tate and Lyle and owner of the first patent for the sugar cube in Britain. Through deft and sadly whimsical portrayal the hidden labour in this relationship is drawn out. Filmed within the Tate and the Tate and Lyle sugar refinery quick links are made between monolithic piles of sugar and the monolithic structure of Tate Modern which however remains unseen – only hinted at through the pouring of sugar in to a coffee possibly in the gallery’s café. In this way our experience of institutional structures under contemporary capitalism is conjured through gesture and symbolic metonymy. Capital ends with the surreal discovery of an alienated and dead third space – somewhere between a cell and an institutionalised gallery made from cubes of sugar.

Lois Rowe graduated from the MFA programme at Glasgow School of Art in 2006. Recent exhibitions include: By Itself 2008, ROOM, London, New Contemporaries 2006, The Coach Shed, Liverpool, and Rochelle School, London, Marks and Comments, Museum for Contemporary Art, Roskilde, Denmark.