Julia Fullerton-Batten “A Testament to Love” and Tim Etchells “Live Forever”
Jenkins Johnson Projects
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Jenkins Johnson Gallery, New York presents new work by two renowned artists working in the UK: photographer Julia Fullerton-Batten and video and performance artist Tim Etchells.
Julia Fullerton-Batten: A Testament to Love is the artist’s third solo exhibition with Jenkins Johnson Gallery, and features the artist’s new series, A Testament to Love. Building on her earlier series that investigate the psyches and relationships of teenage girls, her new series narrates the life struggles when love goes wrong. The women in the images wrestle with the eternal search for a happy ending but find themselves left with feelings of solitude, loneliness, fear, regret, and resignation. Fullerton-Batten focuses on the moments just before or just after the climax of the scenario, which are laden with emotion and tension, leaving the viewer with more questions than answers. Inspired by Hollywood films of the 1960s and 1970s, as well as by the iconic works of Edward Hopper, each image is constructed for its cinematic effects—hard lighting and atmospheric skies heighten the drama. While there is focus on the women’s inner anxieties and despair, they are not passive recipients of life’s drama but an integral part with their own important roles to play; they are empowered. The viewer decides the story—is she being followed or following? Is she leaving or has she been left?
Fullerton-Batten has received much critical acclaim and has been featured in the New Yorker, Le Monde, and the Financial Times, among others. Her work was the cover image for Thames & Hudson’s 2009 book A Guide to Collecting Contemporary Photography. She has shown at esteemed international institutions such as Centre Pompidou, Paris; Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai; Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid; and a solo exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London. Opening in February, her work is featured at the Swedish Museum of Photography. Born in Germany, Fullerton-Batten lives and works in London.
Tim Etchells: Live Forever is a special exhibition featuring the artist’s video Live Forever and the accompanying film stills, printed and mounted on aluminum. Etchells, a keynote speaker at the Tate Modern in November 2013, and the recipient of a Bessie award, often called the Oscars of Dance, in October 2013, is an artist, performer, maker, and writer. He addresses the deconstruction of language and the implication of events unfolding in time through installation, improvised text-performances, interactive audio-experiments, new media, SMS performances, and fiction as well as publicly sited text-works, neon, and LED signage. His simple yet profound video Live Forever comprises a sequence of stills showing letters made from ice, arranged on a concrete floor to spell out the phrase ‘Live Forever’. The ice letters slowly melt, losing definition, into a small stream of water that pools and flows off the screen. The work plays with the tension between the meaning of the text and its ephemeral materiality; the content announcing the bold imperative of an instruction or demand for immortality, whilst the form enacts an entropic descent from the organized solid and legible ice letters to the fluid, unreadable and dispersed as water.
Etchells’ work spans many forms and contexts, and he is known for his role as the Artistic Director of Forced Entertainment, the world-renowned performance collective. Between 2008 and 2013, Etchells was the recipient of a Legacy: Thinker in Residence Award through the Live Art Development Agency and Tate Research. From 2004 to 2007 he was a Creative Research Fellow at Lancaster University, and he was awarded an honorary doctorate in 2007 by Dartington College of Arts. His work has been exhibited at: Tate Liverpool; Gasworks, London; Göteburg International Biennale; CASM, Arts Santa Mònica, Barcelona; MACBA, Barcelona; Künstlerhaus Bremen; Netherlands Media Art Institute, Amsterdam; Sparwasser HQ, Berlin; ArtFutures, Bloomberg SPACE, London; The Centre for Book Arts, Canada; Exit Art, New York; and Manifesta 7, Rovereto, Italy.
[Image: Julia Fullerton-Batten “The End of the Affair” (2013) chromogenic print, 25 x 31 inches, edition of 15; 40 x 54 inches, edition of 7]
Media
Schedule
from December 17, 2013 to February 15, 2014
Opening Reception on 2014-01-09 from 18:00 to 20:00