Matthew Richardson, Jackie Chettur and Gerbrand Burger explore the indeterminate time, place and space of literary fiction and how it is adapted. The artists make use of the gaps that are inherent in how and why a story is read, imagined and made visible. The narratives distilled in this exhibition are re-formed by deliberate acts of selection, deletion and creation.
‘Adaptation’ Transition Gallery 3 - 25 June 2016
Conversation between the artists. published in Garageland 'Remake Remodel'
Matthew Richardson connects versions of Daniel Defoe’s ‘Robinson Crusoe’ (Danger & Mercy) and J.G. Ballard’s ‘Concrete Island’ (Am I The Island). To survive, he uses flotsam and jetsam and tools and technologies from both the physical world and the internet. Images of otherwise mundane objects - a tyre, a potatoe, a cigarette lighter and a few sticks of wood - become significant in the context of ‘the Island’ landscapes.
The viewer is placed as main protagonist in Google Street View - a new Ballardian landscape, while the landscape of Defoe’s story is assembled with washed-up debris - obsolete yet funtctioning technology - metronones, retro speakers and an overhead projector. Tools to construct individual narratives are offered to the viewer as a set of over-sized magic lantern slides, that are changed through their selection, arrangement, re-arrangement and overlay.
Am I The Island (5:28)
