Friday 16th March is shaping up to be a lot of fun in Eastside. Openings at Grand Union, Eastside Projects and VIVID. . . energised by the electric Flatpack Festival. Come by Digbeth for the first opportunity to lay your hands on the Fierce Festival 2012 brochure too – designed by the extraordinary Julie Kim!
Press Release
Reynir Hutber: Stay Behind the Line
Opens Friday 16 March 6–9pm
Exhibition continues 17 March – 22 April 2012, Thursday to Sunday 12–5pm.
Grand Union, in collaboration with Fierce, is proud to present work by Reynir Hutber, an emerging artist based in London, whose work explores themes of social visibility, moral relativity and the everyday imposition of authority. For this solo exhibition he will present his award winning installation, Stay Behind the Line, alongside a series of new related works.
Stay Behind the Line is an interactive installation that takes place in a specially constructed cell-like environment. When visitors enter the space through its narrow doorway, they are confronted by a wall-mounted surveillance monitor directly in front of them. They are now looking at a live video feed of the space with their feet placed in the top third of the screen. Further down in this ‘relayed’ image, however, there is a disturbing anomaly: a superimposed recording of the artist’s twitching, naked body that is no longer physically present in the room. What happens next is down to the visitor…
Other works in the exhibition also explore the absence of the performer. Technology is used to infuse the space with a sense of the artist’s presence and blur the division between past and present, spectator and protagonist. Through his works, Hutber addresses issues specific to the history of performance art while simultaneously exploring the anxieties and uncertainties of living in a sophisticated era of surveillance and mediation: an age in which it is becoming increasingly difficult to verify the authenticity of an image.
Fierce Festival, Birmingham’s premier live art and performance festival, runs from Thursday 29 March to Sunday 8 April 2012. Performers from around the world will converge on Birmingham to bring boundary-pushing performances and art installations to venues and unusual spaces across the city. See www.wearefierce.org for full programme listings.
Stay Behind the Line opens on Friday 16 March, coinciding with the opening of Yangjang Group: After Dinner Shu Fa at Cricket Pavilion at Eastside Projects 6–8pm, and events at Vivid and Ikon Slow Boat as part of Flatpack Festival (14–18 March 2012).
www.flatpackfestival.org
www.eastsideprojects.org
For more information about Grand Union and Reynir Hutber: Stay Behind the Line, please contact Cheryl Jones at info@grand-union.org.uk
For more information about Fierce Festival, please contact Annabel Clarke at press@wearefierce.org
Grand Union is generously supported by Arts Council England and Birmingham City Council.