Gibson / Martelli (igloo) – VISITOR at Towner Eastbourne

Gibson / Martelli (igloo), where the bears are sleeping, 2010

VISITOR is an investigation into experience of place, figure and landscape. Real and invented panoramas depict the beauty and strangeness of the natural world. The gallery visitor is invited into two new installation works – environments inspired by the snow-driven mountains of the Canadian Rockies.

Developed during research by the artists at The Banff Arts Centre in Canada, VISITOR brings the awe-invoking and unnerving experience of the icy wilderness to Towner, Vermilion Lake comprises a full-scale replica of a trapper’s cabin housing an interactive virtual environment, in which the visitor is invited to navigate through an eerie virtual world. A companion moving image piece, where the bears are sleeping (below), depicts monochromatic imagery of glaciers, forests and frozen lakes.

Gibson / Martelli (igloo), Vermilion Lake, 2010

In both works, either a friendly or malevolent force is suggested, evoking the hunter being hunted, the tracker being tracked. Employing techniques used in video games, bringing exterior virtual space into the physical gallery space the exhibition plays with our apprehension of different forms of reality.

Gibson & Martelli work together as igloo creating ambiguous topographies and relationships between the natural and the artificial. Re-purposing media tools and combining them with remodelled objects, prints and interrupted surfaces they simulate and reconfigure representations of the world. The artists’ first work won them a BAFTA nomination and their installations, video works, online projects and performances have featured in international exhibitions and festivals including the 52nd Venice Biennale.

“The worlds they create are total simulacrums: there is no separation between the invented and the real, the site and the represented, the local and the imagined. It is a territory that is cohesive and singular in language, yet simultaneously is forever folding in on itself. Their work engages the particular of the site while undermining its place, the original and point of departure become one in a conceptual unravelling.”

Richard Ducker, Curator, Fieldgate Gallery

Exhibition dates: 28 January – 1 April 2012

Towner

Devonshire Park,

College Road,

Eastbourne

BN21 4JJ

Tel: 01323 434670

Open Tues – Sun, and Bank Holidays, 10am – 5pm