Preview 21 February 6-8pm

Exhibition continues to 3 March

Wed to Sat 12-5.30pm

Karin Kihlberg and Reuben Henry have been collaborating since 2004. Working primarily in video their practice explores filmic language through performance and collaboration. For their presentation at VIVID the artists will present two video pieces.

The Poets features two Chinese actors speaking aloud in what appears to be a destroyed film set. The subtitled English text suggests that the characters are reciting lines from T.S. Elliot's poetry; however the actors are actually narrating their physical stage directions.

  
The Waiting Room is an installation incorporating a series of dark videos, storyboards and production footage. The work was created during a residency at New Art Gallery Walsall where Kihlberg and Henry constructed a film set of a waiting room. Members of the public were invited to contribute to a series of videos about the unavoidable circumstance of waiting. Sound effects and music were added in post-production so that the participants were unaware of the final outcome of the films, creating a huge distinction between the original event and the end product.

Project History and Development

Karin Kihlberg and Reuben Henry aimed to translate the language of film into real life situations. One of their primary objectives was to make everyday life look, sound and feel as good as the movies.

Their project began with a residency at The New Art Gallery Walsall (November 2005 to February 2006) with a film set The Waiting Room. Here they worked with gallery audiences and staff to make videos within specially constructed film sets, and use public space to explore various elements of mise-en-scene.

This was followed by a cross-cultural experiment of a similar genre at the Next Wave Festival, an international art festival running along side the Common Wealth Games in Melbourne Australia; where they produced The Stiff Upper Lip (A Series of Plays In Queens English).

The festival was based in one of the Docklands hangars which held 43 containers; each container was occupied by one project. Kihlberg and Henry began by propositioning visitors to their container by asking for their views on 'Britishness'. The interior of the container had been made into a film set full of props and backdrops referencing stereotypes of Britishness, so that visitors could dress as farmer, aristocracy or policeman while making their statement to the camera. Each day the footage was edited and showed the following day.