Darren Almond: 11 miles…..from Safety
25 April – 31 May 2003
www.whitecube.com
11 miles.....from Safety – a title referring to the distance of Scott from the Antarctic’s fateful last camp from his would-be rescuers – continues Darren Almond’s quest to explore the parameters of time and space and their physical and emotional effect on us. The installation is intentionally disorientating, with a multi-layered soundtrack and a darkness which is literally blinding on entering. The show comprises two new films. Projected on the south wall is a bleakly beautiful scene in Antarctica. Bearing a similarity to his imagery projected onto an outer wall of the National Theatre as part of Public Art Development Trust’s programme – but then it probably takes one iceberg to recognise another – this at first appears as an almost documentary presentation. The image, however, is flipped, a reflection of the sky appearing in the sea that flows along the top of the screen, and it is the realisation of this inversion that unnerves.
The mood is intensified by the film
projected on the opposite wall. Set in the Arctic, and appropriately shown
on the gallery’s north wall, a shadowy figure pulling the unseen artist on a
sledge trudges ever onwards into the darkness, lit only by the ghostly green
of the night-vision camera. Gone is the beauty of the icebergs and blue
seas, replaced instead by a terrifying sense of human vulnerability. The
installation is completed by a numerical and meridian sculpture bisecting
the space, and four monitors that record weather patterns: technology
attempting to exert control over an extreme environment.
As in his previous work, sound plays a crucial part in the installation, and
is used here to enhance the illusion of the literal. The gallery is filled
with a cacophony of different noises: a sparse electronic soundtrack, the
machines doing their work, the cracking and dripping of the ice flows, and
the puffing and groaning of the figure’s struggle, all combining to
inculcate you in Almond’s journey.
This ability to subtly manipulate the viewer, creating an atmosphere that is an intensified, illusory version of reality, is what makes Almond’s work so effective. In 11 miles.....from Safety he has created a piece that is full of thoughtful contradictions and in so doing has somehow tamed the extreme environment he has recorded, fixing it in time.
Eliza Williams