April 22, 2010
Palimpsests is a three-piece mini-show by Oxford-bred artist Lara Saxby-Soria. Broadly speaking, the title means "traces", and all the pieces reflect the artist's interest in the way our progression leaves a record of our passing in the inanimate world. Each piece is a video installation - but an unusual one. Lara likes to project onto interesting surfaces in interesting ways: the whole gallery space is involved in the projection area.
Entering the gallery, you are greeted by the clatter of celluloid. This is coming from two cine-film projectors, with their reels extended way up and out so that each is showing an eternity ring of film. They project, one from each side, onto the same square of perspex hanging in mid air. You can walk right round it: from one side it's a honey-coloured stone cloister; from the other, the same cloister has an ocean tide flowing up the corridor. Surreal yet strangely graceful; for me it has echoes of Ozymandias: the elaborate stonework being worn away constantly and imperceptibly by the tide of time.
The second piece is a little girl standing in a summer meadow. The meadow is a hazy backdrop; the image of the little girl hovers on a small figure made of real dandelion clocks. Yes. The seed heads of dandelions. Real ones. At first her face is a chubby blur, then your eyes become accustomed and the child is vividly there. Really quite vividly. I can't decide if it's lovely or sinister. Probably both. The almost golden haziness of the meadow behind her adds to the effect of a memory of childhood summer: warm, dreamlike and distant and infinitely fragile.
Then there's a room of pylons. A revolving projector sends footage of an urban train journey travelling round on an endless loop, through the figures and shadows of five ceiling-high pylons made of string. The shadows twist as the film goes round through and past them, layering different pylons on the wall, blurring and sharpening, swooping faster as it reaches the corners and shrinking down as it gets closer, repeating the known-and-unknown vision etched on commuter's memory.
If you're in the area, it's definitely worth dropping in to the little gallery. It's pretty weird and wonderful, and obviously made by a person with a unique vision of the world around us.
Entering the gallery, you are greeted by the clatter of celluloid. This is coming from two cine-film projectors, with their reels extended way up and out so that each is showing an eternity ring of film. They project, one from each side, onto the same square of perspex hanging in mid air. You can walk right round it: from one side it's a honey-coloured stone cloister; from the other, the same cloister has an ocean tide flowing up the corridor. Surreal yet strangely graceful; for me it has echoes of Ozymandias: the elaborate stonework being worn away constantly and imperceptibly by the tide of time.
The second piece is a little girl standing in a summer meadow. The meadow is a hazy backdrop; the image of the little girl hovers on a small figure made of real dandelion clocks. Yes. The seed heads of dandelions. Real ones. At first her face is a chubby blur, then your eyes become accustomed and the child is vividly there. Really quite vividly. I can't decide if it's lovely or sinister. Probably both. The almost golden haziness of the meadow behind her adds to the effect of a memory of childhood summer: warm, dreamlike and distant and infinitely fragile.
Then there's a room of pylons. A revolving projector sends footage of an urban train journey travelling round on an endless loop, through the figures and shadows of five ceiling-high pylons made of string. The shadows twist as the film goes round through and past them, layering different pylons on the wall, blurring and sharpening, swooping faster as it reaches the corners and shrinking down as it gets closer, repeating the known-and-unknown vision etched on commuter's memory.
If you're in the area, it's definitely worth dropping in to the little gallery. It's pretty weird and wonderful, and obviously made by a person with a unique vision of the world around us.