Following the success of bazaar in 2006, The Open Eye Club were invited back to Tramway to curate another event. The Human Arc took place on the 20th of November 2008 and was the 8th event by The Open Eye Club. It was described by Cunningham and Hennessy as being:
‘a set of conditions; the selected artists, the specific space, the context of a unique event, via which the artists are enabled and encouraged to work in a different manner or to experiment with un-realised projects. Therefore the path connecting one artwork to another may not be direct but it will be curved, with ideas, images and forms eclipsing and reflecting back upon each other’
For The Human Arc The Open Eye Club are commissioned 7 artists to make new work specifically for the event.
An essay by Neil Mulholland was commissioned to accompany the event and is available by clicking here.
Maze de Boer is a Dutch artist currently completing his final year at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. His practice is predominately installation based often creating and re-creating environments for the viewer to physically enter. In response to being commissioned to make a single screen video for 'The Human Arc' de Boer has made Point of View in which the artist has filmed the slowly shifting pattern on a broken plasma television and combined it with specifically composed music by Florentijn Boddendijk & Remco de Jong. The work suggests a digital or virtual landscape and is borne out of a component of the installation Replaced made by de Boer earlier this year.
Martin Healy’s work explores the aesthetics and mediation of popular cultural mythologies and phenomena. Through the mediums of photography and video, Healy’s explorations are examinations of the currency or belief structures that support various mythologies.
'Facsimile', filmed in a botanical garden, is primarily inspired by the science fiction novel The Invention of Morel, by Adolfo Bioy Casares. The novel's story centers on a man, marooned on a tropical island, who discovers an invention that can reproduce life-like three-dimensional images of anything it records. The narrator eventually realizes that the people he encounters and some of the surroundings are recordings, repeating the course of one week eternally. The text accompanying the work is an extract from the novel that refers to the repetition of the protagonists existence on the island.
Martin Healy is represented by Rubicon Gallery, Dublin.
Martin Healy, Facsimile
The multidisciplinary work of Geoffrey Farmer often draws upon actual or contrived narratives reflecting an interest in the theatrical notions of improvisation and role-play as well as the fictional power and temporal component of the art exhibition. For 'The Human Arc' Farmer has made 'The 7am Sunday Bottle Smashers' and 'The Window Meditator'. Essentially filmed on the road whilst in Europe last month these works highlight two key interests in Farmers practice; transformation and narrative as structure. Recent exhibitions by Farmer include a solo exhibition at Witte de With, Rotterdam and participation in the Brussels Biennial earlier this year. He is represented by Catriona Jeffries Gallery, Vancouver.
Pil and Galia Kollectiv are 2 London based artists, writers and curators working in collaboration whose work explores the 'utopian discourses of the twentieth century'.
"In ‘In Further Proof Of The Preceding Theory’ a future cult of archaeologists dressed in white robes perform a ritual excavation of the Stonehenge site. A musical score, by Zuzushi Monkey, accompanies the dig, with percussion mirroring the action. Two disciples set off towards the henge and proceed to play it 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.”
Recent exhibitions by Pil and Galia include 'Svetlana' at S1 Artspace, Sheffield.
Pil & Galia Kollectiv, In Further Proof Of The Preceding Theory
Glasgow based artist Calum Stirling presents the installation ‘Left for Frank’. Made specifically for 'The Human Arc' the work “explores happenstance and the performative possibilities of the object by placing a number of large theatrical and sculptural props interspersed with video cameras into the space. Audience interaction with the installation is presented as a series of black and white video stills shot on the night using a video delay to place a gap between capture and presentation. The work continues the artists work with illusion, perception and chance occurrence in relation to static sculptural form.” Forthcoming projects include a large-scale commission for New Victoria Hospital in Glasgow, a project for for Locws International in Swansea and solo show at Leeds Metropolitan University Gallery. Image: Rostra Plaza for Gi 2008.
Glasgow based artist Sara Barker works with materials such as cardboard, concrete and paint to create subtle sculptures which often rest on or are themselves table like plinths of her own design. The formal compositional qualities of her work often suggest a framing or re-framing of space, a relationship to language, and in some instances activating a negative space within the sculpture. For 'The Human Arc' Barker will be making a new sculpture which will offer multiple framing's of the space, acting in some way as a mental or formal boundary.
Barker is represented by Mary Mary Gallery, Glasgow. Recent exhibitions include Base:Object at Andrea Rosen, NY.
Sara Barker
Scott Myles’ practice operates within subtly social contexts. He produces conceptually based sculptures, spatial installations, photographs and screen prints. For The Human Arc, Myles has developed a new performance for the event provisionally titled 'Reciprocity on Three Planes'.
Scott Myles lives and works in Glasgow. Recent exhibitions include: We Require a Response, Meyer Riegger Gallery, Karlsruhe/ Berlin, MISSING WORDS, The Modern Institute at Sadie Coles HQ, London and On Interchange/ Interludes of a Collection, Museum Kurhaus Kleve, Kleve, Germany.
Scott Myles, Reciprocity on Three Planes
The commissioning of new work has been made possible by funding from the Scottish Arts Council
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