virtually real
DESCRIPTION
Catalogue for the exhibition 'Virtually Real' at the Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery from 1 March 2011 until 21 May 2011. Essay by Dawn Woolley and James Moore.TRANSCRIPT
virtuallyreal
virtuallyreal
Petros Chrisostomou
Bruce Ingram
Grant W Miller
James Moore
Suzanne Moxhay
Jamie Tiller
Julia Willms
Simon Woolham
Dawn Woolley
Virtually Real
First published in 2011 to coincide with the exhibition
Virtually Real, 1 March 2011 – 21 May 2011
© The Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery, except where otherwise stated
All images © The Artist 2011
ISBN-13 978-1-874331-44-5
EAN 9781874331445
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a re-
trieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electrical, mechanical
or otherwise, without first seeking the permission of the copyright owners and of
the publishers.
The Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery
University of Leeds
Parkinson Building
Woodhouse Lane
Leeds LS2 9JT
Front cover Image: Bruce Ingram, Thousand Years III, 2008
Back cover Image: Dawn Woolley, Interloper (fence), 2008/9
Designed by James Moore and Dawn Woolley
Printed by the University of Leeds
virtuallyreal
‘In these angles and corners, the dreamer would appearto enjoy the repose that divides being and non-being. Heis the being of an unreality’ Gaston Bachelard1
FROM the origins of spatial realism in paintings to the
flattened planes and spaces of modernism, the illusion of
space has been a central aesthetic concern within the
canon of art history.
In a visual culture where photography and CGI create
facsimile spaces that are disposable and instantly
digestible, this exhibition aims to bring together work that
subverts the representation of space. Each work contains
an element of trickery that confounds rather than confirms
our expectations of reality. The artists ask the viewer to be-
lieve in the integrity of their scene, inviting them to look
closer and explore the fiction of the space they have
depicted. Like Bachelard’s ‘being of an unreality’, the
spectator must allow themselves to inhabit a space that
is situated between reality and the imaginary.
The title words Virtually Real form a somewhat oxymoronic
concept. Philosophical ideas of the term ‘virtual’ reveal it
to be something that has the properties of an actual thing;
something that can issue real effects. We take ‘virtual’ to
mean not real, but displaying qualities of ‘the real’.
Following that definition the other title word ‘real’, is
characterised as a confirmation of truth, of a physical
existence. It is perhaps best described by Philip K Dick,
1. Bachelard, Gaston. ThePoetics of Space, Boston,1994, p145
when he wrote ‘Reality is that which, when you stop
believing in it, doesn’t go away’2. This draws our attention
to subjective and objective realities, and describes an
unmistakable definition of the objective ‘real’.
Objectivity is highly problematic when you try to define it or
pin it down. Art works are always subjective to the artist
who created them, offering a unique vision or interpretation
of reality. Works of art are embedded with the intricacies of
the individuals who produced them and the training,
discourse and cultural experience that they have undergone.
In this exhibition, the artists play on our assumptions
of objectivity. The art works appear to represent reality but
on closer inspection we apprehend a certain feature or
detail that stops us believing in the initial interpretation
and the subjective nature of the work comes to the fore.
This inevitably leads to a group of works that display some
traits of surrealism and the uncanny.
Philosophical explorations into an individual’s understand-
ing of the real run at least as far back as Plato. One of
Plato’s main concepts was that we don’t live in a world
where things ‘are’, but in a world where things ‘seem’. In
his work The Republic3, written around 360BC, Plato
describes a theoretical experiment called The Parable of the
Cave. In the parable, we are asked to imagine a group of
people that are held captive inside a cave, and have been
there for their entire life. The captives are held in a fixed
position so they can only see one wall of the cave and
2. Dick, Philip K. “How toBuild a Universe ThatDoesn’t Fall Apart TwoDays Later”, The ShiftingRealities of Philip K. Dick,Selected Literary AndPhilosophical Writings,Ed. Lawrence Sutin, NewYork, 1995, p261
3. Plato, The Republic,Trans. Desmond Lee, London, 1955
cannot move from that viewpoint. Behind their position is
a blazing fire casting light onto the cave walls. In-between
the captives and the fire is a walkway, along which the
captors move, holding up objects so that they cast their
shadows in view of the captives. The only visual experience
that they have is these fleeting shadows moving across the
wall in front of them, and their perception is reinforced by
their discussions amongst themselves about what they are
seeing.
The experiment moves on with one of the captives being
released, initially to explore the cave, revealing to them the
world outside their line of sight. They gain understanding
that the shadows they’ve been looking at are not real. The
freed person is then released from the cave into the world,
where they see the fullness of reality.
In the parable the captives inside the cave represent
ordinary people who live in a world of illusion, where the
visible world that they focus on in everyday experiences is
imperfect. The freed person is able to attain the most
accurate view of reality in a constantly changing world. They
are the only one with a concept that there is anything
beyond the ‘reality’ of the cave wall. They naturally return
to the cave to explain their findings to the other captives,
but face rejection and ridicule from them. As a group the
captives exist in a consensual ‘virtual reality’. It is thought
that Plato intended the freed person to signify a philoso-
pher, in particular Socrates, his famous teacher who was
killed by the Athenian state for his philosophical views.
The idea Plato cogitates on in the parable, that people
understand reality based on data that agrees with their
perception, education and shared experience, is central to
many philosophical fictions. A well-known example is TheTruman Show4, in which the central character Truman
Burbank lives a staged life inside a TV show – a fact which
is entirely beyond his comprehension. From his subjective
point of view, reality is the world of the small town he lives
within. A chain of events allow doubt to creep into Truman’s
world, and the closer he looks at the surface of his
surroundings and the relationships with his friends and
family, the flimsier it all seems. The story climaxes with
Truman’s desperate attempt to break out of the fake that
he has become convinced he is living within. The TV show’s
creator, acting as the captor from Plato’s cave, and as a
kind of God that oversees Truman’s reality, is convinced that
Truman prefers the fake cell that he lives within to the
rough, unsafe real world outside of the studio. The choice
of whether or not to remain inside a known fiction - a
virtual reality - is central to the films conclusion.
In this exhibition we hope the artworks ask the viewer to
question their perception of reality. The artists play the role
of the captors in Plato’s cave and The Truman Show. The
audience is imprisoned by the apparently straightforward
reading of the works, but then becomes aware of the
constructed nature of the scenes. Like Truman, or the
4. The Truman Show, Dir.Peter Weir, ParamountPictures,1998The plot of this film iswidely acknowledged asbeing influenced by PhilipK Dick’s novel Time out ofJoint although it is not adirect adaptation.
released captive from the cave, the spectator is unable to
return to belief in the original illusion.
*
Invented architectural space forms the basis of James
Moore’s work, where subject matter is constructed inside a
computer modelling programme. The paintings Sea Walland Railings are derived from a collage – or model – that
is built from small sections of hand painted paper, which
are in turn scanned into the computer rendering applica-
tion. A virtual snapshot is taken of the scene and the
resulting image becomes reduced back to the realm of
painting. The work City 17 is the result of a different process
– it is a reproduction from a computer game. Moore explores
these environments with the eye of a photographer, ‘moving’
around the levels ignoring the intended flow of the game,
instead looking for a good virtual photo opportunity. The
snatched stills are then used as a basis for an oil painting
on canvas – pulling the hi-tech dynamic virtual space back
to the archaic realm of painting. By presenting these virtual
spaces in the form of paintings, a relationship to reality is
implied. It’s not immediately apparent that the paintings
aren’t depicting real places; it could easily be believed that
they are ‘normal’ landscapes. The audience sees reality
although they are only looking at shapes and shadows, like
the captives in Plato’s cave.
Like Moore, Suzanne Moxhay creates artwork that is
seemingly realistic but is in fact completely fabricated.
Manipulation of space drives the process of her work
through its different stages. ‘From the photograph, to the
print, to the three dimensional set in the studio, and then
back to the photograph, imagery is continually moved
through real and illusory space.’5 The works show beau-
tifully collaged scenes that retain the elaborate character-
istics of the source imagery – bits of moiré print pattern
can be picked up on the surface of some elements, put side
by side with hi-resolution pieces of image, forming a
seamless whole that is grand in scale. Sampled sections
of photograph are repeated throughout the composition,
creating a uniformity that is comforting and familiar rather
than disruptive to the implied realism of the scene.
Grant Miller’s paintings intensively explore the illusion and
construction of space. They create a visual experience that
appears abstract at first, but reveals itself to be a highly
complex physical space. The effect is of a net of fragments
of the real world – some architecture perhaps, or the
deconstructed remains of an interior – entwined within
organic pulsing layers of physical paint that web across the
rigid layers. The intricate complexity animates the paintings
and allows the viewer to become lost in the hierarchy of
colours and forms; subtle layerings of resins, opaque grid
lines and vanishing planes. The paintings bring to mind a
description written by Maurice Merleau-Ponty in Phenome-nology of Perception. ‘…the house itself is not the house5. Moxhay, Suzanne
seen from nowhere, but the house seen from everywhere.
The completed object is translucent, being shot through
from all sides by an infinite number of present scrutinies
which intersect in its depths leaving nothing hidden.’6 The
architectural spaces in Miller’s paintings are seemingly
both interior and exterior, giving the viewer the feeling that
they are experiencing multiple angles of perception.
*
Much of the artwork in this exhibition could be said to evoke
uncanny sensations. It is a concept defined by Freud in
his 1919 essay The Uncanny7. It describes the uncomfort-
able strangeness, or even fear, experienced when viewing
something that is familiar and unfamiliar at the same time.
In his essay, Freud outlines various scenarios that could
trigger an uncanny experience, such as a foreign object or
event invading a familiar domestic space, or seeing a
human-like automaton that borders on familiarity.
In the 1970s the roboticist Masahiro Mori, noted for his
pioneering work on the emotional responses of humans to
non-human entities, published an article entitled ‘The
Uncanny Valley’8. It described the responses of test subjects
to humanlike robots. He noted that the more closely the
robots resembled human beings, the more they appeared
virtually real, and the greater the level of acceptance by the
test subject. However, when the robots became too human
the test subjects began to react negatively towards them.
6. Merleau-Ponty, Mau-rice. Phenomenology ofPerception, London,2002, p79
7. Freud, Sigmund. TheUncanny, Trans. DavidMcLintock, London, 2003
8. Mori, Masahiro. “TheUncanny Valley”, Energy,7(4), 1970, pp 33-35
He found that ‘when our perceptual system switches over
from noticing the life-like aspects of the robot to underlin-
ing the discrepancies’9, the test subjects expressed feelings
of eeriness or discomfort about the appearance of the
robots. He called the point at which they became too
life-like and repulsive to the test subjects ‘the uncanny
valley’.
Although this research was only ascribed to humanlike
robots, the perceptual system could also describe our
experience of viewing some of the artwork in this exhibition.
There is an initial viewing state of familiar acceptance for
seemingly straight forward imagery. Then the mind begins
to register certain incongruous details that lead us to
question the initial reading, and finally we no longer look
for the everyday aspects of the scene, only picking up on
the aberrations that reveal it as a falsity. This effect
operates to some extent in all the works included in VirtuallyReal. As in Freud’s definition of the uncanny the artwork
9. Hollander, Ari. “PlayingGames with PainfulMemories: Designing VRExposure Therapy Simu-lations for PTSD”,[http://seriousgames-source.com/features/fea-ture_053006_ptsd.php],2011
and the realms they describe transform from homely
and safe into unknown and unexpected dimensions.
They become unheimlich10 – something that was supposed
to remain secret or concealed but became visible to the
viewer.11 Like the humanoid robot in the depths of the
uncanny valley, the details that expose the unreality of the
artwork become visible to the viewer. The sense of intellec-
tual uncertainty is defined by the homely familiar setting
and its unhomely and disturbing details.
Dawn Woolley’s photographs voyeuristically depict partially
concealed women. The images appear to be real but they
have an uncanny nature which prolongs the look of the
viewer and exposes the artificiality of the scene. As the
spectator notices the cut edge of the paper, the women’s
bodies are revealed to be two-dimensional cut-out photo-
graphs. Like Mori’s humanoid robot the legs appear to be
life-like (or death-like) but are not living, they are artificial
imposters. ‘The spectator also undergoes a transformation
from voyeur to fetishist as the body is revealed to be an
inanimate object.’12 In the work the two-dimensional and
three-dimensional are juxtaposed in a comment on reality
and idealisation.
Jamie Tiller’s photographs also play on the notion of the
familiar and the unfamiliar as described by the uncanny.
Marginal architectural zones are used to confuse pictorial
space, in which real places appear unreal and border on
being compressed abstract planes. The works in his Black
10. In Freud’s The Un-canny, a central conceptinvolves the words heim-lich and unheimlich,roughly translated fromGerman to mean homelyand unhomely.
11. Freud, Sigmund. TheUncanny, Trans. DavidMcLintock, London, 2003
12. Woolley, Dawn
Box series are photographed at night without any human
presence. The locations appear so unnatural and empty that
'… the city itself becomes illusionary, like the set of a film
or a computer generated architectural model.'13 The method
of photography used here gives the images a strange sheen,
dislocating the scene into something that looks highly
artificial. The artwork becomes the spatial equivalent of an
automaton – something that resembles reality but in a too-
perfect manner that isn’t able to suggest life.
The relationship between real and artificial spaces is
explored in Julia Willms’ video Revision, and in her
accompanying photographs. Her work clearly juxtaposes
elements of homely and unhomely imagery that sit together
in a surreal space that is intriguing to view. Her video
projection seamlessly merges existing architectural space
into something strangely subverted; offering the viewer a
convincing version of reality that slowly disintegrates into
impossible situations. ‘The installation is about the
threshold between the real and the imagined space. The
spectator stands in the real space and is invited to cross
the threshold and step into the image.’14
*
It is unsurprising that our visual senses are confused by
the conflicting imagery in artwork that confounds di-
mensions and prevents normal registers of scale. In recent
neuro-psychology research, Richard Gregory defined our
13. Tiller, Jamie
14. Willms, Julia
visual perception of the world when he wrote, ‘vision is
certainly not infallible. This is largely because knowledge
and assumptions add so much that vision is not directly
related to the eyes’ images or limited by them – so
quite often produce fictions.’15 We often don’t see what is
in front us, but instead see what we expect to see, our vision
being heavily informed by our preconceptions and expecta-
tions of the world around us.
We buy into visual fictions, or more accurately, we see what
we expect to see when presented with a familiar-looking
image. Much of the artwork selected for this exhibition
contains a blurring between the boundaries of the real and
the illusory; the disjuncture between reality and imagined
spaces. Our attention is vexed by some incongruous
elements that disrupt the seemingly straightforward in-
terpretation of the scenes. Some of the artwork in VirtuallyReal plays on the role of assumption in sight.
On the first instance of looking, Petros Chrisostomou’s work
confuses our sense of scale. As Richard Gregory describes,
our knowledge and assumption tells us that we see a real
interior space with a monstrously scaled sculpture
domi- nating the room. As we take time to interpret
the subtle visual clues within the photographs we are able
to determine the visual trick, that the room is miniature and
the giant sculpture is an everyday object. Space and scale
become tools to explore ideas of value and commodity. ‘The
sensation of the uncanny is achieved through a disjunction
15. Gregory, Richard. Eyeand Brain: The Psychol-ogy of Seeing. Oxford,2007, p6
in the work, due to the contrasting elements that have been
combined, that allows the viewer to speculate the real and
the imaginary…’16
Bruce Ingram’s work in this exhibition also contains a
blending of dimensional forms. The collages take on a
physical presence and exist as sculptures, blurring
boundaries between figurative sensibilities and abstract
materiality. Through the creation of organic forms and
found imagery alluding to gardens and nature the audience
is transposed to an imaginary space. The titles such
as The Midnight Garden add to this departure to fantasy.
Ingram’s tree sculptures titled Thousand Years relate to the
art form of bonsai, the capturing of a contemplative scene
that miniaturises the majesty of nature down to a tiny scale.
In Ingram’s work the real is reconfigured ‘…through a
playful and experimental process of collage and collection,
the experience of the everyday world is gathered and
organised within new forms of art works.’17 Images lifted
from different periods of art history are mixed with the
consumer culture of today resulting in works that confuse
space and time.
Simon Woolham’s Pop-up drawings also inhabit the space
between two and three dimensions. Beginning with biro
drawings, ‘…dilapidated environments come to life in a
skint version of enchantment: a tree stump or a broken
fence are filled with the meanings of the events that go on
around and about them.’18 Cut and folded paper transform
16. Chrisostomou, Petros
17. Ingram, Bruce
18. Woolham, Simon
everyday objects into emotive sights for memory and
recollection. When viewed as a group, the three dimensional
drawings form a coherent world with the snippets of
narrative that unfold in each ‘location’, like memories of
overheard conversations. The particular locations described
in Woolham’s pop-ups conjure nostalgic recollection for the
spectator.
*
Baudrillard’s theory of the hyperreal is a fitting place to
bring this essay to an end; it’s a concept central to his work
Simulacra and Simulation, written in 198119. Hyperreality
is a theory that was heavily referenced in the film TheMatrix, and involves a negation of reality, and an adoption
of simulations and virtual spaces as the predominant realm
of existence. According to Baudrillard, the hyperreal is
located in all the simulated places in the modern world that
offer a saturation of signs, narrative and imagery – places
such as casinos, theme parks, shopping malls, movies,
video games and social networks. With ever more sophisti-
cated technology the simulation became the predominant
experience. In The Matrix these ideas are taken to their
extreme and reality is completely concealed by the simula-
tion – or as Morpheus says to Neo ‘The Matrix is the world
that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the
truth.’20 It could be said that art exists as part of the
hyperreal - especially if an artwork attempts to blur the
boundary between reality and simulation.
19. Baudrillard, Jean.Simulacra And Simula-tion, Trans. Sheila FariaGlaser, Michigan, 1994
20. The Matrix. Dir. Andy& Larry Wachowski,Warner Bros Pictures,1999
The aim of Virtually Real is to bring together artworks that
play on the senses and assumptions of the audience. Like
the shadows in Plato’s cave or the simulations of The Matrix,the artworks offer a veneer of reality, but unlike the captors
mentioned above, the artists do not intend to hold us within
the illusion, but merely to show us the other possible spaces
of imagination and memory.
James Moore & Dawn Woolley 2011
Julia WillmsRevision, 2007 Video, 5:52 mins (looped),edition 3/3 + 2EA
PetrosChrisostomou
Icarus, 2008Colour photograph on Diasec
Courtesy Galerie Xippas,Paris/Athens
Reflexion, 2008Colour photograph on Diasec
Courtesy Galerie Xippas,Paris/Athens
4, 2008Colour photograph on Diasec
Courtesy Galerie Xippas,Paris/Athens
BruceIngram
Midnight Garden, 2006Mixed Media
Courtesy Spring Projects
Thousand Years V, 2008Mixed Media
Courtesy Spring Projects
Thousand Years III, 2008Mixed Media
Courtesy Spring Projects
GrantMiller
Untitled ( DAI – 312)2007, Mixed Media
Untitled (PRO-63)2007, Mixed Media
Detail:Untitled ( DAI – 312)2007, Mixed Media
JamesMoore
Sea Wall, 2010Oil on Canvas
City 17, 2010Oil on Canvas
Railings, 2010Oil on Canvas
SuzanneMoxhay
Sirocco, 2007C-type Print on Diasec
Courtesy of BEARSPACE
Sequoia, 2008Archival Digital Print onAluminium
Courtesy of BEARSPACE
Detail: Sirocco, 2007 C-type Print on Diasec
Courtesy of BEARSPACE
JamieTiller
Black Box #4, 2007 C-type Print on Diasec
Black Box #3, 2007 C-type Print on Diasec
Kabin Collection
JuliaWillms
Revision 2007Video, 5:52 mins (looped),edition 3/3 + 2EA
Urban Household 52008, Digital Collage, C-type Print on Aluminium,1/5 + 2EA
Urban Household 12007, Digital Collage, C-type Print on Aluminium,5/5 + 2/2EA
Courtesy of Andrea Bozic
SimonWoolham
Chase Pop-Up2009/10, Biro Pen andCollage on Paper
The Sheds Pop-Up2009/10, Biro Pen andCollage on Paper
The Shortcut Pop-Up2009/10, Biro Pen andCollage on Paper
The Pissy Shed Pop-Up2009/10, Biro Pen andCollage on Paper
DawnWoolley
Interloper (fence)2008/9, Colour Photograph
Interloper (stockings)2008/9, Colour Photograph
Detail:Interloper (fence)2008/9, ColourPhotograph
AcknowledgementsLayla Bloom, Tony Rae, Hilary Diaper, Zsuzsanna Reed Papp, Laura Millward, Hollie
Kritikos - Blades, Liz Stainforth, Paul Whittle, Peter Farmer, Solomon Papasavva,
Jennifer Cuff, Lucy Jackson and Mindy Lee.
‘In these angles and corners, the dreamer wouldappear to enjoy the repose that divides being andnon-being. He is the being of an unreality’ Gaston Bachelard
FROM the origins of spatial realism in paintings to theflattened planes and spaces of modernism, the illusionof space has been a central aesthetic concern withinthe canon of art history.
In a visual culture where photography and CGI createfacsimile spaces that are disposable and instantlydigestible, this exhibition aims to bring together workthat subverts the representation of space. Each workcontains an element of trickery that confounds ratherthan confirms our expectations of reality. The artistsask the viewer to believe in the integrity of their scene,inviting them to look closer and explore the fiction ofthe space they have depicted. Like Bachelard’s ‘beingof an unreality’, the spectator must allow themselvesto inhabit a space that is situated between reality andthe imaginary.
01/03/11 - 21/05/11
The Stanley & Audrey Burton GalleryParkinson Building, Woodhouse Lane, University of Leeds. Leeds, LS2 9JT