nca | nichido contemporary art

Sophy Rickett
-AUDITORIUM and recent photoworks-

Venue:nca | nichido contemporary art
Date:10th April 2009 (Fri.)-16th May(Sat.)
Gallery hours: Tue. - Sat.11:00 - 19:00 (Closed on Sun.Mon.National Holidays)
Artist Reception:10th April 2009(Fri.)18:00 - 20:00

We are delighted to announce Sophy Rickett's solo show “AUDITORIUM and recent photoworks" at nca.

-AUDITORIUM-
AUDITORIUM is a major new film and sound installation by artist Sophy Rickett and composer Ed Hughes. It is a direct response to Glyndebourne Opera, both as a physical site and as a locus of music and performance with a rich and celebrated history.

Bringing together the two artists' interest in modernist forms and values in art, and strongly echoing Sophy Rickett's photographic work, the film uncompromisingly strips back the operatic space to its architectural and theatrical core, revealing another more minimal drama of spatial plays and simple, slow movement that transforms the interior of the building in a monumental caress of light and shadow.

Rickett turns the stage, backstage and auditorium of Glyndebourne into a play of deferred revelations that implicitly acknowledge the tensions and contradictions between the two theatrical metaphors of truth and knowledge. At times her film is impassively formal, offering an austere image of truth as geometry. At other times it turns the functional modernist spaces of the Glyndebourne opera house into a baroque fantasy; a joyful play of illusory spaces.

The work was commissioned by Photoworks and Glyndebourne (Education) and was funded by Arts Council England. The film has been exhibited in the UK at De La Warr Pavilion, Tate Britain and Ffotogallery Cardiff, and in Italy at Galleria Civica di Moderna and Alberto Peola Arte Contemporanea, Turin.
* Auditorium: A film by Sophy Rickett with music by Ed Hughes.

-UNTITLED (NATURE STUDY)-
In her new photographic series, Untitled (Nature Study), Rickett continues to develop her ongoing interest in moments around the encounter between people and nature. Taking as its starting point, and initial inspiration, a Barn Owl sanctuary in Gloucestershire, the work explores the very human desire to connect with nature, and through this, the desire to experience a sense of the sublime. In relation to landscape and photography, she is interested in photography's fundamental role as a mediator - that is, both in terms of imagery generated, as well as of the actual physical experience of using a camera in the 'natural world'. This project is ongoing, and will continue to be developed over the course of 2009.

Selected Exhibition:2008 Alberto Peola Arte Contemporanea (Italy), 2007 Auditorium, De La Warr Pavillion(UK), Tate Britain (UK), 2005 Emily Tsingou Gallery (UK), 2004 Alberto Peola Arte Contemporanea(Italy), 2003 Viva Roma, The British Council of Rome (Italy), Centre pour l'image contemporaine(Switzerland), Emily Tsingou Gallery (UK)
Collection:Victoria&Albert Museum(UK), Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaundengo(Italy), Musee des Beaux-Arts(France), Windsor GmbH(Germany)

Exhibition in nca | nichido contemporary art supported by the British Council