Jane and Louise Wilson at DCA
21 January - 25 March 2012
Jane & Louise Wilson
Dundee Contemporary Arts
Dundee, Scotland
This exhibition combined two bodies of work by acclaimed British artists Jane and Louise Wilson: Atomgrad (Nature Abhors a Vacuum), 2010 and the UK premiere of Face Scripting – What Did the Building See?, 2011.
Commissioned by Forma to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster Atomgrad (Nature Abhors a Vacuum) is a suite of large-scale photographic prints, depicting deserted interiors from the now almost entirely abandoned town of Pripyat, situated within the 30km wide Exclusion Zone. The richly textured images of former public spaces include a kindergarten, cinema and a swimming pool, all of which explicitly reveal years of decay and the hurried nature of their abandonment.
Face Scripting – What Did the Building See? made in collaboration with Shumon Basar and Eyal Weiznan, was inspired by the assassination of Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh, a Hamas operative, in a Dubai hotel room in January 2010. The two-part film installation shows the artists’ own film alongside real CCTV footage that was compiled, and subsequently released on YouTube, by the Dubai state police. This work is an intensely detailed study of the site of the assassination and a meditation on current trends in surveillance techniques.
Jane and Louise Wilson were born in Newcastle, and currently live and work in London. They began working together in 1989 and have exhibited in major galleries throughout the world. They were nominated for the Turner Prize in 1999.
DCA hosted a series of related films, talks and events. Highlights included:
Artist Talk
Wed 18 January, 11:00
Lecture Theatre, Dundee University
Jane and Louise Wilson discussed their work and current exhibition at DCA. The talk was presented in association with Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design.
Tony White: Short Story Readings
Sat 21 January, 14:00–15:00
DCA Meeting Room
Tony White is the author of critically acclaimed novels including Foxy-T (Faber and Faber). To accompany Jane and Louise Wilson’s exhibition he was commissioned to write a new short story which focused on the Chernobyl disaster from a UK perspective.
Atomgrad (Nature Abhors a Vacuum) (2010)
Jane and Louise Wilson
Produced by Forma
Co-commissioned by Forma, John Hansard Gallery, Dundee Contemporary Arts and The Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester.
The development of this project is supported by the British Council and by the Center for Urban History of Central East Europe, Lviv.
Face Scripting - What did the Building See? 2011
A film installation by Jane and Louise Wilson
Text by Eyal Wiezman and Shumon Basar
Produced by Pinky Ghundale and Shumon Basar
Directed by Jane and Louise Wilson
Commissioned by Sharjah Art Foundation, co-produced by the Farook Foundation with Mohammed Hafiz & Dalia Asaad, Luis Augusto Teixeira de Freitas and the Forensic Architecture project.
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