STATEMENT

This project is a curatorial programme of four site-specific installations by contemporary artists, in turn taking an ephemeral ownership of a place no longer in use: two telephone booths. Each artist reanimates these ‘black holes’ with a personal vision, creating minute environments or news relations.


Two of the pieces explore the notion of communication inherent to the original place, activating a dialogue using the binary element of the site into two rooms, two people, two sides of a story.
. Davina Drummond has commissioned a conversation between her grandparents whose recording has been split between the two cabins, so that the conversation will be completed in two different places. Is she putting the visitor in the place of a passive recipient or of a subjectivised listener?
. Frederique Decombe prompts the visitors to activate the rooms by following mysterious instructions for use on each door. The piece is an invitation to tell a story that may be heard by someone else in the adjacent room. Would the narratives resonate for one self or will it be for another?
In both installations, the presence of the other listening to an intimate story will oscillate between empathy and voyeurism.

The two other pieces reside in the design of concrete places of a different nature. Intimate or public, these micro environments require a solitaire incubation time.
. Courtney Power chooses the place of a children’s room as a mini theatre to be unveiled. What seems to be at first sight benevolent and entertaining features are a sort of trompe l’oeil exposing existential and political fears. Are the mobiles and their projections a metaphor of the instability of the world, or is it a multifaceted signifier?
. Isabella Lockett’s piece is equally thought provoking. Through the evocation of travel, the train carriage provides a platform within which to invite the passenger to reflect on the images of the countryside through different times as well as different genres and conventions. Will this journey be one of contemplation or reverie, or will it become a springboard for exploring and debating the ideology hidden behind the image?