[NetBehaviour] Susan Collins & Tim Head – Side by Side

[marc garrett]

Susan Collins & Tim Head – Side by Side
Slow Fields - Digital Media
Opening Friday, 12. September 2008 at 7 p.m.
Duration: 13. September - 1. November 2008
Opening Hours: Tue - Fri 2 - 6 p.m., Sat. 10 a.m - 2 p.m.
 
(Saturday 06.09. 08 from 10 a.m. - 10 p.m. on the occasion of the „Rote 
Punkt“ Gallery Tours we will be showing Susan Collins’ „Glenlandia“ 
entire 12 hrs (2 years) archive of moving image projection and Tim 
Head’s „Wildfire 2004“ Realtime Computer program and LCD Screen.)

In the second half of the year we continue with interesting tendencies 
and connections in our gallery program. The London artist Susan Collins 
explores landscape like the Hamburg artist Bertolt Hering
http://www.bertolt-hering.de/index.php?id=77. in the previous show.

Unlike Hering,  she does not linger over long periods of time in the 
countryside to explore and notate the colours, transforming them finally 
into genial landscape painting, instead, she installs webcams in rural 
locations and captures similarly breathtaking digital landscapes. 
Secondly, we present in succession under the working title 2 x 2 Side by 
Side 2 artists pairs who both happen to live and work in London and who 
have similar approaches to their work. Astrid Bärndal & David Neat will 
follow this show with an opening on 7 November.
 
Through their parallel working practices Tim Head and Susan Collins 
explore the properties of digital media in distinct and inventive ways. 
Susan Collins' recent work employs transmission, networking and time as 
primary materials creating digital representations of landscape where 
each pixel represents a unit of time. Tim Head bypasses image as 
representation by using solely the prime physical elements of the medium 
to form the work.
 
For Tim Head, the elusive and contrary nature of the digital medium and 
its unsettled relationship with both ourselves and with the physical 
world forms the basis for recent work. Computer programs are written to 
generate unique events in ‘real time’ on screens, projections and inkjet 
prints that focus on the intrinsic properties of these digital media. 
The programs operate at the primary scale of the medium’s smallest 
visual element (the pixel or inkjet dot) by treating each element as a 
separate individual entity. The medium is no longer transparent but opaque.
 
Susan Collins' gradually unfolding, classically romantic landscape 
images are harvested and archived over the course of the year. They 
encode the landscape over time, with different tonal horizontal bands 
recording fluctuations in light and movement throughout the day and with 
broad bands of black depicting night-time. Stray pixels appear in the 
image where the moon passes through or a bird, person, car or other 
unidentifiable object passes in front of the webcam as the pixel is 
captured. The work is intended to be slow, a reflection on the ever 
increasing speeds we demand from the internet. Poised between the still 
and the moving image, the lens and the pixel, the prints explore how 
images can be coded and decoded using both light and time as building 
blocks for the work.
 
Slow Fields is the first time these two bodies of work will be shown 
together.
 
Susan Collins (b. 1964 London) studied at the Slade School of Fine Art 
and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (as a Fulbright Scholar) 
and is one of the UK’s leading artists working with digital media. 
Collins traverses public, gallery and online spaces with works including 
In Conversation; Transporting Skies; The Spectrascope and commissions 
including Tate in Space - for Tate online (nominated for a Bafta 
award).  Recent group shows include Outlook Express(ed) at Oakville 
Galleries, Canada; Webscape, Vestsjællands Kunstmuseum, Søro, Denmark 
and Video Vortex at The Netherlands Media Art Institute, Amsterdam.
Further Information and Documentation of works can be found at: 
http://www.susan-collins.net <http://www.susan-collins.net>
 
Tim Head (b. 1946) studied at the University Newcastle-upon Tyne with 
Richard Hamilton and at the St. Martins School of Art. In 1980 he 
represented Great Britain at the Venice Biennale and, in 1993 the 
Whitechapel Gallery in London honoured him with a retrospective. He has 
been shown worldwide in many renowned solo and group shows including the 
Tate Triennial, Days Like These, London, [2003], and 7e Biennale d'Art 
Contemporain de Lyon 2003.  Public commissions include National Museum 
of Photography, Film and Television, Bradford [1985], Science Museum, 
London [1995], Artezium Arts and Media Centre, Luton [1998], Eurythmics 
Peace Tour [1999], “Light Up Queen Street” Corporation of London [2005]. 
Department of Biochemistry, University of Oxford [2008].

Further Information and Documentation of works can be found at: 
http://www.timhead.net


Angelika Osterwalder

OsterwaldersArtOffice
Galerie
Isestrasse 37
20144 Hamburg

Tel. & Fax. ++ 040 48 61 09

http://www.osterwaldersartoffice.com