07.02.11
Aidan McNeill: CAST
Aidan McNeill / CAST: 4 March – 2 April
PayneShurvell is pleased to present ‘CAST’, an exhibition of new photographic and video work by Aidan McNeill.
For her first solo exhibition at the gallery, McNeill takes us behind the curtains of musical theatre’s most extravagant fictions to document a very different kind of production.
In a series of large-scale photographic works, McNeill references both the Romantic tradition, and the romance the theatre. At first glance, the photographs seem to image an ethereal world of shadows and light. However, underlying are the signs of the mapping of staged action.
Prop tape, scratches and lines of trap doors highlight the overall mechanics of the whole within this systematic collaboration of production.
McNeill also presents Performance 139: a video installation recorded from the live feed of a Musical Director conducting the orchestra of a major West End Musical.
Contrasting with the Director’s impassioned gestures, the film is sound-tracked by a stream of letters and numbers as the Deputy Stage Manager calmly and simultaneously calls into action an intricate pattern of lighting and visual effects that recreate the drama on stage.
In deconstructing the workings of the show itself, ideas of authorship and spectacle are questioned, so that the onlooker’s role takes centre stage in a complex interplay of placement, manipulation and control.
Aidan McNeill (b.1976) has an MA, Fine Art from Central Saint Martins. She has shown in exhibitions including ‘The HA Project’ (London/Helsinki, 2007), ‘Salon 09’’ (Matt Roberts Arts, 2009) and ‘A Bright and Guilty Place’ (PayneShurvell, 2010). Her work is held in private and public collections in the UK and North America.
CAST is curated by Emma Elia-Shaul who has had exhibitions at public and commercial spaces, including The Hospital, City Atrium, The Photographers’ Gallery, Outline (Amsterdam), Capital Culture, Artprocess (Paris) and Gallery Westland Place.
Aidan McNeill / CAST: 4 March – 2 April
16 Hewett Street (off Curtain Rd), London UK EC2A 3NN
Tel: +44 (0) 20 0011 4115 www.payneshurvell.com
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