“Tallentire notes that her work ‘might have something to do with itinerancy’. Saying ‘I am interested in flux, mobility, chance and working with a dismantling, re-figuring and re-ordering of materials and systems, primarily in relation to conditions of social and political life. This then produces a practice that is more or less permanently on the move, materially and conceptually’.
Conceived as a compendium of video works varying between 24 seconds and 6.16 minutes, each segment of Drift is titled in relation to the time of day or night when filmed. When installed, Drift is constructed as a unique modification of the whole, created according to the scope and context of each space. The installation arranged for Hollybush Gardens takes inspiration from the collaboration with architect Dominic Stevens in Drift: diagram xii at Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, 2010 (as part of This and other things) – where moving through a scaffolding structure formed the viewing experience. In the new configuration scaffolding will be constructed to make reference to the temporary in relation to architecture and location. Drift: diagram xiii engages the skills and knowledge of the workers depicted in the video material, whilst simultaneously exploring a process of construction and the constructed.Two new video sequences have been shot specifically for this presentation to further reference both the location and the build of the installation.
Since 2002, Tallentire has filmed workers within the financial district of the City of London, such as cleaners,
painters and construction workers. The footage has been decelerated to draw attention to the minutiae of different ‘work’ activities transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary. The beginnings of Drift came as Tallentire began to recalibrate her relationship to live performance – looking at the actions of others instead of her own. In Drift she considers the potential of gesture as an embodiment of agency, specifically in relation to the figure of the worker in public space. Tallentire examines the physicality of labour at the centre of England’s fiscal capital, where the products of human toil register simultaneously as visible and invisible, additionally abstracted into numerical expressions of ownership represented by the machinations of the financial sector. The agency of those portrayed is thrown into relief by the modernity of what geographers would call a time-space locale within the city. A site isconstructed that reveals bodily comportment and gait bringing us to think about how we might occupy space differently depending on our subject position. Embedded too are references to seminal works such as Bruce Nauman’s Walking in an Exaggerated Manner Around the Perimeter of a Square (67-68) that explored space in general by the occupation and delineation of space through performance.
Also on show is a single screen video Zero 58 (2007).The hand held camera moves in on an abandoned vehicle with red fabric woven through the wrecked van.The image seems ubiquitous, signifying a cityscape wrought with struggle. Filmed in London, the image plays with an ambivalence, as well as testifying to a chance encounter between site, artist and object – resonating with Tallentire’s itinerant modus operandi and her immersion in the materiality of things.
Anne Tallentire has shown widely nationally and internationally. She represented Ireland at the Venice Biennale in 1999 and most recently held a solo show This and other things IMMA, Dublin in 2010. She is currently included in At your service, art and labour, Techniches Museum, Vienna. Pervious shows include: A Pursuit of Happiness, Gallery 3, Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin 2007, Arena Industriale (commission) in Storie Urbane, Palazzo Pratonieri, Reggio Emilia, Italy, 2006, Drift: diagram vii, Void, Derry, 2005, Instances, LUX, London, 1999. She is a Professor of Fine Art at Central Saint Martins School of Art and Design.
The exhibition is generously supported by University of the Arts, London”
Photo © Andy Keate
