Ed Atkins Or tears, of course

  • 15 February — 30 March 2013
  • Curated by Isobel Harbison

Exhibition Events

Opening:
Thursday 14 February, 6pm - 8pm
Performance: 6.30pm

Further Information

His work communicates an unyielding, peculiarly personal vision of the world in a voice so sterilized as to achieve an almost inhuman efficiency and logic.

- Atkins quoting Dennis Cooper, on filmmaker Robert Bresson.

Temple Bar Galley + Studios is pleased to present Or tears, of course, the first exhibition of British artist Ed Atkins in Ireland. For the exhibition, the artist has developed a new performance that will take place live on the opening night. The performance will be recorded and edited into a film which will be screened in the gallery for the duration of the exhibition. Further sonic and visual elements will be introduced to the work at certain points in what Atkins describes as, ‘a text becoming a play, becoming a video, becoming an exhibition.’

Ed Atkins is best known for his high definition videos and performances that play with the fleshy corporeality of high definition digital technologies. In a number of previous videos, Atkins established a number of co-ordinates; protean objects, an anonymous blonde’s head seen from behind, a deserted landscape through which the camera rushes. These coordinates create sequences, developed, repeated, reordered and manipulated; digital visual and sound effects appear to melt or congeal the elements so as to become themselves tangible and corporeal. The digital film is treated as an independent body or compulsive force set upon human life.

At Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, Atkins posits ‘a progression of becoming-representation, which is usually asserted as only possible in death.’ The progression, seen through the work’s changing body, will come about in what Atkins terms a series of ‘generative acts’. The artist will perform on the opening night and will later be in conversation with the curator. His exhibition will coincide with LUX Dublin new associate programme. A screening of Atkins work will also appear in the Irish Film Institute as part of the Experimental Film Club on 26 March 2013.

Biographies

Ed Atkins

Ed Atkins was born in 1982, in the United Kingdom. He has had recent solo projects at Tate Britain (2011) and Chisenhale Gallery, London (2012) as well as recent group exhibitions including 'A Dying Artist', ICA, London (2011), 'Time Again', Sculpture Center, New York (2011), and 'An Echo Button', with James Richards and Haroon Mirza, for Performa 2011. He was shortlisted for the Jarman Award, 2011 and is a winner of the inaugural 'Tomorrow Never Knows' Film and Video Umbrella film commission (2012). This year he has solo exhibitions at Isabella Bortolozzi Gallery, Berlin and MoMA PS1, New York, group exhibitions at Artists Space and Team Gallery, NY and a screening at Oberhausen Film Festival, Oberhausen.

Isobel Harbison

Isobel Harbison is a Dublin-born, London-based writer and curator. Harbison contributes to frieze, Kaleidoscope, Modern Painters and Tate Etc, among other magazines and publications. Between 2008 and 2010 she was Exhibitions Organiser for Hayward Touring. Harbison recently curated ‘Entrance, Entrance’ at Temple Bar Gallery (2012), ‘The Geneva Window’ (2011) at The Lab, Dublin and 'Closed Forever' (2010) at Auto-Italia London. She is curating forthcoming exhibitions ‘Cyborgs, Hybrids and Chimeras’ with Hayward Touring, and a retrospective screening of works by American artist Ericka Beckman at Tate Modern (both 2013). Harbison is currently AHRC doctoral scholar in the Art Department, Goldsmiths, London.