GEORGE BARBER

George Barber, The Freestone Drone (2013) Video projection, 12.30mins

The Freestone Drone responds to unmanned weapons of war. The subject of drones regularly appears in the media and government, haunting and fascinating all in equal measure. Objectively, they are no worse than previous weapons of war but they hint at a dark Sci-fi future of unseen forces, undetected robots in the sky waiting to strike. Barber’s Freestone Drone is an unusual drone; he can talk - like Thomas the Tank Engine. And like Thomas too, he disobeys orders and causes confusion and delay. The Freestone Drone has a conscience. The Freestone Drone is a lyrical reaction to the apprehension that drones are eliciting worldwide.

George Barber is a well-established video artist. Recent exhibitions include Tate Britain, London; Waterside Contemporary, London; Dundee Contemporary Arts;  Postmodernism, Victoria and Albert Museum; India: Visions from the Outside, Bruges, Belgium; Royal Academy Summer Exhibition and Automotive Action Painting, Tate Britain (with Film & Video Umbrella) in 2006. Barber is represented by Waterside Contemporary and is a Professor at UCA (University for the Creative Arts). 

AMANDA BEECH

Amanda Beech, Falk (2006) Video projection, 15mins

Filmed on location in Stavanger, Norway, Falk stretches over time, crosses continents, implicates terrorists, the mafia, state, corporate and police organisations, and clandestine networks of resistance and subterfuge in a mobilized extrapolation on power. The old left are now the new right, power is increasingly unstable, and private criminal wills are the authors of communal justice. Justice is achieved when truth is proven. It is here where politics grounds new truth claims, where the achievement of impact is the getting of power.

Beech is an artist and writer living in Los Angeles. Recent shows include L’Avenir, Montreal Biennale (2014); EVA International, Ireland’s Biennial, Limerick (2014); Everything Has Led to this Moment, Xero, Kline & Coma, London; All Obstructing Walls Have Been Broken Down, Catalyst Arts, Belfast; Final Machine, Lanchester Gallery Projects, Coventry; Asymmetrical Cinema, Beaconsfield Gallery, London (2013); The Church The Bank The Art Gallery, Banner Repeater, London and Sanity Assassin, Spike Island, Bristol (2010). Recent interviews can be accessed via www.urbanomic.com/yarnwork and Talk At Ten, Marfa Public Radio.  

DAVID COTTERRELL

David Cotterrell, 9-Liner (2008) 

Three channel video projection, 25mins 

9-Liner is a three-channel time based work, which explores the dislocation between the parallel experiences of casualties within theatre. It is a quiet study of a dramatic event: the attempt to bring an injured soldier to the tented entrance of the desert field hospital. The three screens show synchronised but apparently unrelated information. JCHAT - a silent scrolling codified message - runs on a central screen. Interpretation of the message is enabled through its relationship to one of two radically different, but equally accurate, views of the same event. To the left we see the Watchkeeper, a soldier manning phones and reading computer screens in a crowded office. On the right we view the MERT flight, the journey of the Medical Emergency Response Team in a Chinook helicopter. 

David Cotterrell is an installation artist working across media and technologies. Cotterrell’s work has been commissioned and shown internationally including CodeYellow, UTD Gallery and Central Trak Gallery, Dallas, Texas; Guardami (Palazzo Delle Papesse, Siena), The Ostrich Experiments, Danielle Arnaud Contemporary Art, London; Remote Control (MoCA, Shanghai); War and Medicine (Wellcome Collection, London; Monsters of the Id, John Hansard Gallery, Southampton; Dislocations, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb, Croatia; Wake, Dilston Grove, CGP London; Eastern Standard, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, USA; Deutsches Hygene Museum, Dresden; Canadian War Museum, Ottawa, Canada; Monsters of the Id, John Hansard Gallery, Southampton. He is Professor of Fine Art at Sheffield Hallam University and is represented by Danielle Arnaud Contemporary Art, London.  

JOHN GERRARD

Live Fire Exercise (Djibouti) (2011)

Video, 25mins

As with the other works in Gerrard’s Exercise series, Live Fire Exercise has been developed from a single image: a photograph from what is known as a 'live fire exercise' by the US Military, or an exercise using explosives which 'pre-shocks' troops and exposes them to blast as part of their training. The photograph was sourced on the US military media interface site Defence Video and Image Distribution System (www. dvidshub.net). The original Djibouti location has been recreated as a virtual space, populated with military vehicles. Once a day at 2pm (the time the original photograph was taken) the vehicles in the scene assemble and a blast is triggered without warning. Instead of this event taking just a few seconds to complete in reality, this exercise is extended over 25 minutes - with the explosion slowly burning out - filling the screen with black smoke that eventually clears. Once this happens the vehicles leave the scene - leaving a patch of scorched earth until the exercise happens once again the next afternoon at 2pm continuing this daily cycle throughout the exhibition. In line with other examples of Gerrard’s work, Live Fire Exercise also exists as part of a stage production, in interaction with live performers. This instantiation of the piece was a response to the commission of choreographer Wayne McGregor, who choreographed to it a 25-minute performance by the Royal Ballet. The work premiered at the Royal Opera House, London on May 13th 2011. 

Production Credits

Werner Poetzelberger: Producer

Helmut Bressler: Programmer

Matthias Strohmaier: Programmer

Martin Hebestreit: Vehicle / Landscape Modeller

Ulrich Radhuber: Vehicle / Landscape Modeller

Christoph Staber: Lead Vehicle Animator

Patrick Zeymer: Vehicle Animator

Staging Design: Jakob Illera Inseq

Recent solo exhibitions include Solar Reserve, Lincoln Centre, New York City, USA; Sow Farm, Rathole Gallery, Tokyo, Japan; Exercise, Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, Turkey; Pulp Press (Kistefos); a permanent installation at Kistefos Museet, Norway; Modern Art Oxford, Oxford; Infinite Freedom Exercise, Manchester International Festival 2011; Ivory Press Madrid, Spain; Institute of Contemporary Art, Perth, Australia; Universal, Void Gallery, Derry, Northern Ireland; Sow Farm: What You See is Where You're At. Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, Scotland; Oil Stick Work, Art on the Underground, Canary Wharf Station, London; Directions: John Gerrard, Hirshhorn Museum + Sculpture Garden, Washington DC, USA and John Gerrard, Animated Scene, 53rd International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia, Italy (2009). John Gerrard is represented by Thomas Dane Gallery.  

GIBSON/MARTELLI

Gibson/Martelli, Ragtime(2015)

Computer simulation

Physics engines sometimes use a type of procedural animation known as ‘ragdoll’ to replace static death animations in first person shooter videogames. Here, the artists create an endlessly collapsing ragdoll figure.

Gibson/Martelli, MANAedition6 (2015)

Self-adhesive vinyl, dimensions variable

MAN A takes military ‘Dazzle’ camouflage as a point of departure. Unlike traditional camouflage, which operates on the principle of concealment, dazzle camouflage is a complex arrangement of high-contrast, interrupted patterns of geometric shapes. These are intended to confuse the calculation of a ship’s range, speed, and bearing in an enemy’s optical gunnery rangefinder. MAN A creates a playful dialogue between machine-readable visual information and the primordial impulse to recognise human figures in a landscape. Motion-captured dance emerges from the patterns, when activated by a custom app created by the artists. 

Artist Bruno Martelli collaborates with dance and visual artist Ruth Gibson. Gibson / Martelli create installations and performance spaces using computer games, virtual reality, print & video. The duo are based in the London and see their practice as an investigation into figure and landscape, simulacra and the sublime. Until 2010 they worked together as igloo - their first collaboration BAFTA nominated. They have received awards and commissions from NESTA, The Henry Moore Foundation, Arts Council England and the AHRC. They exhibit in galleries, theatres and festivals world- wide including the 52nd Venice Biennale (Palazzzo Zenobio); Watch-Me-Move & Digital Revolution Barbican Gallery touring exhibition; Zero1, ISEA San Jose, USA; Game-Time, Australian Centre for Moving Image, Melbourne; Transmediale, Berlin; Encontros Acarte - Centre de Arte Moderne, Lisbon; DansenHaus,Oslo; ICA, London and UNION gallery, London.  

DEREK OGBOURNE

Museum of Optography: Objects from the Chamber (2012)

Museum of Optography: The Human Optogram Device (2008)

WDF Warzsawa 72, DVD, (2010) 9mins

Museum of Optography: The Purple Chamber, Part One (2011)

Ogbourne's work is powered by the frenetic and exhilarating ongoing plot of big themes: physical life, death, violence, beauty and the sublime; landscape and vision. Pulsing with the strengths and frailties of what it is like to be human, his obsessive preoccupations result in deeply complex, emotionally engaging artworks. He is best Ogbourne's latest works range from his cinematic piece Death and the Monument and Flesh to his clinically sublime photographs of dissected cows’ eyes and recent series of large exquisite landscape drawings. His project The Museum of Optography continues to preoccupy Ogbourne with his latest violent heart stopping machines adding to an inventory of nearly 300 artworks that compromise his museum. 

Derek Ogbourne studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, London (1983-1989) and since then has exhibited extensively in the UK and abroad. Exhibitions include What Make You, What Makes You at the South London Gallery, Space International, Valencia, Spain and the Museum of Optography at Sharjah Foundation, UAE.  

NONNY DE LA PENA

Nonny de la Peña, Use of Force (2015)

Oculus Rift virtual reality work

When thirty-five year old Anastasio Hernandez Rojas was beaten and tasered to death by the border patrol, an incident that the San Diego coroner’s office ruled was a homicide, he was one of more than a dozen migrants who have been killed by United States border patrol under questionable circumstances in the past two years. This piece highlights and creates awareness of the dehumanization of migrants using revolutionary immersive nonfiction storytelling techniques that employ gaming and virtual reality technologies to tell the narrative. Wearing fully-tracked goggles and experiencing a spatial soundscape, the piece takes advantage of sensations of presence that come with these technologies to make the audience feel like they are on scene the harrowing night of Anastasio’s death Nonny de la Peña was named One of the 13 People Who Made the World More Creative by Fast  Company for pioneering immersive journalism and changing the way people experience nonfiction narratives. Using cutting edge virtual reality technology, she immerses viewers in documentary stories, allowing them to feel an extraordinary emotional connection as witnesses. A graduate of Harvard University, and a former correspondent for Newsweek, she has more than 20 years of journalism and award- winning documentary filmmaking experience. Screenings and showcases around the globe include the Sundance and Tribeca Film Festivals, Victoria and Albert Museum, Moscow Museum of Modern Art, LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial. In conjunction with her doctorate, she currently heads the MxR Studio at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts.  

MATTHEW NOEL-TOD

Matthew Noel-Tod, A Season in Hell 3D (2014)

3D video projection, loop

In a blazing inferno turns a 3D image of the world orbited by four cartoon children. Encircling the globe is the Latin palindrome; In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni (We go in circles into the night, we are consumed by fire). The phrase, which is the title of Guy Debord’s final film, is originally attributed to the behaviour of moths around fire. In A Season in Hell 3D the children are in constant movement, never landing, never leaving. Purgatory is overwritten by the ecstasy of the spectacle. Matthew Noel-Tod (born 1978), selected exhibitions and screenings include: Death, Project Number, London; A Season in Hell 3D, Banner Repeater, London; Assembly: A Survey of Recent Artists’ Film and Video in Britain 2008–2013, Tate Britain, London; The Universal Addressability of  Dumb Things, Hayward Touring; The Adverts, Canary Wharf Screen, LUX, London; Bang! Chisenhale Gallery, London; A Skvader, Norwich Castle Museum with Outpost Gallery, Norwich; Blind Carbon Copy, Picture This, Bristol and Nought to Sixty, ICA, London. He is Senior Lecturer in Moving Image at University of Brighton and his work is distributed by LUX.