Soundperformance at Exhibition Opening of
SOLAR PLATTER by Artis Inês Rebelo

SE8 Gallery, 171 Deptford High Street, London SE8 3NU
www.se8.gallery

Sound Performance by Esther Saladin

Opening:                       Saturday 12 July, 6:00-8:00pm
Show Runs:                  12 July – 27 July
Opening Hours:           Saturdays and Sundays 2-6pm and by appointment
Event:                         Sound Performance by Esther Saladin Saturday 12 July 7pm
                                                                      

In the exhibition Solar Platter devised especially for the Deptford X biennale artist Inês Rebelo tracks the transit of the sun and maps it in relation to the gallery space and courtyard; this process results in the display and choreographic movement of a number of works throughout the duration of the show.

    ‘Space is a practiced place’ writes Michel de Certeau. A gallery is just a room until it is inscribed with artistic activities that include artists, curators, writers and audiences. The space is reaffirmed each time an artist inhabits it, and then remade by the particular installation or body of work. If the perception of space is mutable, then so is the observer’s position. It is this lived change that Henri Bergson refers to as ‘pure duration’, which the artist explores by placing the viewer within a representation of the shifting cosmos.

    Several registers of time and place are present in the exhibition at once. The artist’s drawings of solar flares chronicle a continuous 24-hour period but are taken from images from the SOHO telescope released selectively every hour. Elsewhere, images of the sun scroll across the surface of a monitor as a screensaver; these are supplied by respondents to the artist’s online calls for solar images and are uploaded from time to time. Though we are used to live feeds of information, none of the sets of images correspond to this experience. Rather, the delay inherent in all of them relates to our perception of distant starlight since the sun is 150000 million kilometres away and its rays take over eight minutes to reach us. Though origin and reception are separated in time, the ‘then’ and the ‘now’ coexist as a single experience of unbroken sunlight. 

    The use of mundane, everyday objects raises questions of sustainability in a world of compromised resources. Reflective golden and silver food trays, mundane castoffs of consumption, are recycled as sustainable support surfaces for her drawings depicting solar activity. These coated food boards demonstrate the same supposed fragility as the flimsy external metal foil used to protect spaceships from heat, radiation and micro-meteorites. These are offset by a large painting on aluminium supported by a metal stand; depicting the distant solar system, the image eschews the playful intimacy of the drawings and suggests a feeling of a technological sublime.

    Interaction with different elements forms an integral aspect of the exhibition by moving objects about, submission of images and sonic responses. Here, the artist, invited performers, and the audience intersect. The cellist Esther Saladin contributes a live riposte stimulated by the works in the exhibition, accompanying their transit through the spaces. These strategies provide ways of grasping the cosmos, something otherwise beyond our understanding, whilst also setting up ways of reshaping our perception of these phenomena through play.