Curatorial programme „Distancing Tactics“ by Matthew Douglas

STATE: is pleased to announce that Matthew Douglas has been selected as one of the curators of the 2010 curatorial residencies in the WINDOWS204 gallery in Bristol. The gallery provides a curious venue for contemporary art and aims to create an exciting dialogue between the artists and the audience through the exhibits. Matthew Douglas curates: Tomas Hein, Marje Murusalu and Matt Cockayne under the title „Distancing Tactics“.

The space that lies between the real and the perceived is a phenomenon that can either be taken for granted or viewed as an area for investigation. It is within this space that the germ of ambiguity and subjectivity originates.

Language is responsible for our reading of the world around us. In this way language acts rather like a filter that both enhances the visual and places it in restraint. I have been prone to expressing (and often advocating) a mistrust of language, yet if this filter serves a dual purpose, both stifling and enriching, it seems more appropriate to adopt a more pacifistic and contemplative approach to its analysis.

To an artist visual language can be employed as a tool to enhance or shut down the viewers reading of a work. Mechanized creative processes such as photography film etc contain a language that is dictated by the nature of the equipment and can be emphasized or deliberately stifled by the photographer or the film maker. Similarly painting, sculpture and more contemporarily, installation are affected by a visual language rooted in the history of each given medium and this history can be referenced or deliberately challenged by the practitioner.

The work exhibited in Windows204 over the next nine weeks will allow a public interaction with the work where this phenomenon of reading can take place. The work will also be analyzed through artist interviews and discussion at www.2042010.com and be further disseminated by publication in a book at the end of the year.

As curator, I am aiming to encourage each artist to analyze their practice and discuss the use of visual language within their work. Furthermore, I hope that by erecting this conceptual framework the work will raise the awareness of the onlooker, allowing the participant to not only observe the work in the windows but also observe their own reactions to it, prompting an individual analysis of the phenomenon of reading a work through visual language - traversing this space dictated by the distancing tactics of the artist.

Matthew Douglas - winter 2009

„Distancing Tactics“ will be on display till 4th April, 2010. Additional information: www.2042010.com