Ventriloquist
27th February to 28th March 2009 | Timothy Taylor Gallery, 15 Carlos Place, London
Timothy Taylor Gallery is delighted to present Ventriloquist, a group show that links works by some of the 20th centuryʼs greatest artists with those of a younger generation of established and emerging talent.
Features Pil and Galia Kollectiv’s work Another Proof of the Preceding Theory, from the 2008 Art+Archaeology residency.
Another Proof of the Preceding Theory was produced as part of a residency run by Art+Archeology in conjunction with the Stonehenge Riverside project. The film explores the relationship between science, work and ritual, imagining archaeology as a future cult. As two robed disciples stray off from the dig, they are drawn to the drone of the stones and proceed to play the henge like a gigantic Theremin. Just as a Theremin is played with the hand interfering in an electric circuit and producing sound without contact, so the stones respond to the choreographed bodily proximity. Finally, one of the two continues alone to the avenue at Avebury, where the magnetic pull of the stones reaches its climax. Shot on VHS, the film features a score by Zuzushi Monkey, with percussion and theremin sounds mirroring the action. The performers are mostly artists and archeologists from the art and archaeology teams. The archeologists were encouraged to perform their normal work in the robes, in an attempt to explore the meeting points of science and ritual and interrogate our relationship to an ultimately unknowable prehistoric past where activities we do not understand are relegated to the realm of religion. Stonehenge has unique acoustic properties, it’s large sarsen stones are finely worked on the inside, left rough on the outside, intensifying sound waves within the inner horseshoe, but since their real use, having been built over centuries, remains ambiguous, the film proposes that our attempts to decode them may themselves become encoded in their cumulative meaning for future researchers.
Time Out review of the Ventriloquist Exhibition
Previous Events
- Art and Archaeology Exhibition
- Earthscapes: Geology + Geography Seminar
- Touchstone
- Stonehenge Riverside: The Ventral Surface
- Another Proof of the Preceding Theory Screening at the Herzliya Biennale
- Ventriloquist
- Art and Archaeology Seminar
- Simon Callery Field Drawings
- Drawing Stonehenge
- Virtual World Exhibition: Stonehenge Riverside Project 2007 Artist Residencies
- Site Specific: Between Archaeologists and Artists
- Some Time Now
- Interferences - High Moorland Visitor Centre, 2006
- Interferences - offiCina, Beijing, China, 2006
- The Big Draw
- Shovel Down National Archaeology Week 2005
- The UCL Big Draw Event
Publications
- Documenting the Past - Cheshire Life Article, November 2008
- Drawing from the Past
- Drawing Time - British Archaeology Magazine Article
- South of Woodhenge. An Interim Report on the 2007 excavations
- Land Division and identity in Later Prehistoric Dartmoor, South-West Britain
- Recent Approaches to the Archaeology of Land Allotment
- Historical context and chronology of Bronze Age land enclosure on Dartmoor, UK
- Drawing: The Purpose
- Theorising Tenure: A Landscape Analysis of Later Prehistoric Dartmoor
- Summary Report of the 2004 Excavations and Survey at Shovel Down
- Summary Report of the 2003 Excavations and Survey at Shovel Down
- Excavations of Bronze Age field systems, Shovel Down, Dartmoor, 2003