WAKE
PEGGY ATHERTON
& SARAH PUCILL
5 MAY to 5 JUNE
2005
London Gallery West brings together Peggy Atherton and Sarah
Pucill, two artists who explore our complex relationship with death
through sculpture, film and installation.
Angela Kingston writes: "Peggy Atherton collects road-kill:
the squashed and broken bodies of dead road-side animals and
birds. She gathers up the corpses of foxes,
rabbits, hedgehogs and deer, and crows, magpies and pheasants - and
sometimes a dead snake or lizard - and arranges
them together in a bed of flower-heads.
Sometimes she will make one of these elaborate displays in a quiet
location in the countryside, where it becomes a secret
shrine. At other times, she casts her tableaux
in materials such as fibreglass or rubber, or create a film about
them, and in this way her assemblages evolve to become destined for
urban galleries.
By contrast, in Sarah Pucill's films
'Swollen Stigma' (1998) and 'Cast' (2000), there are living actors
who 'play dead'. Women, some masquerading as dolls, lie motionless
and sometimes staring, challenging us to decide whether they are
'dead' or alive - the camera dwelling a long time on this
moment.
The artists is playing on the
conventions of theatre
and cinema in which
living actors 'die' for us.
And she is also
revisiting the age-old games all children play, in which they
pretend to be killed, or to be dead.
Both of
these kinds of enactments are connected to the most overwhelming of
our anxieties: death.
In 'Stages of Mourning'
(2004) the camera is made to pore over some life-size portrait
photographs of the artist's lover, who helped to make these two
films - and who suddenly died in 2001. In 'Wake' Peggy Atherton and
Sarah Pucill contemplate life's residues, its precious
remains."
Biographies:
Peggy Atherton is a graduate from the RCA and has been
curating and exhibiting since 1996. Recent exhibitions include
'What's new from London' at The Orion Gallery Belgium curated by
Edward Lucie Smith, 'Artube' in association with Bloomberg, Martin
Kudlek Gallery, Cologne. In 2002 she received an
Arts & Heritage commission with Marble Hill
House. From 2001 to 2003 she was the curator at The tablet
Gallery, London. She launched 'The
Chambers Gallery' London last year. She is currently Senior
Lecturer in Mixed Media Fine Art at the University of
Westminster.
Since completing her MA at the Slade in 1990, Sarah Pucill has
been making
16mm films that have been funded by the Arts Council, London
Production
Fund, Carlton TV and the AHRB. Her work has
been exhibited in museums, film
festivals and galleries internationally, and has won awards at
Oberhausen
and Atlanta festivals.
Her retrospective screenings include the Tate
Britain, The Lux and 291 Gallery. Her
photographs are in the Saatchi
collection and her recent images from 'Stages of Mourning' are
included in Masquerade, a publication on women's
photographic self portraiture.
GALLERY TALK:
Peggy Atherton and Sarah Pucill in conversation with curator
and writer Angela Kingston.
Wednesday 11 May 2005, 14.30
With support from CREAM