Oh, Zero, One [and other exhibitions cont.]

And so the exhibition write ups continue....


Oh, Zero, One: Ruth Beale & Una Knox, Cell Project Space


Knowing Ruth Beale's work from previous exhibitions I knew this would be worth going to, and I wasn't disappointed.  Oh, Zero, One looks at the collection of knowledge and how we perceive and interact with them. Beale's work All the Libraries in London  is literally an alphabetical text list of the names of the libraries in London on the wall. There appears to be some sort of system, some names are in italics, some in other fonts, but there is no key to decipher the differing elements; I can assume that the differences are to distinguish between public, private, and institutional libraries. The list even includes the library from which I was made redundant just a few months ago, now closed and the books waiting to find out their fate. In the centre of the room there is a bench with headphones, upon which loops an audio piece; my assumption is that it is Ruth Beale's voice talking about each library, but as you listen you realise she is talking about libraries that are closed or abandoned, ones that I haven't heard being abandoned.....the scene she sets seems quite apocalyptic and it makes me wonder about the line between fiction and reality; she could be describing the reality of the library closures around London, and yet somehow it seems to speak of the future, a dystopia that could come from the pages of  Huxley's Brave New World.

In the next part of the exhibition Una Knox has a video piece that seems to show a character that works in the storerooms of a big museum, he is talking about some sort of medical condition where he has episodes of sudden and very strange sensations of deja vu. As he walks around the old building describing the condition and the way he works at his job you start getting the feeling of deja vu too, the audio and the visual looping at different rates, or perhaps repetitive visuals. There are parts in the film which strongly remind me of a video that plays at the Wellcome Collection's permanent exhibition rooms, The Phantom Museum by The Brothers Quay. Ghostly legs run up a large staircase, gloved hands unlock rooms containing many objects and carefully unwrap things for us to see. You get an impression of the storehouse of an institution which you get with Knox's work also, in fact it could even be the same staircase.... Deja Vu again.....