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For his first exhibition at Matt’s Gallery, and first solo exhibition in London, Paul Rooney has made a new 27 minute film shot on 16mm, La Décision Doypack (2008), co-commissioned by Matt’s Gallery and the Loughborough University Radar programme. A further new commission entitled Failing That (2008), with images and a text written by the artist, will feature in the gallery publication, which is free to visitors throughout the exhibition.

These works approach the subject of historical memory. Exploring the way in which history only properly exists if it is actively recalled in the present, but also how flawed that recollection can be, the works ultimately reveal the comedy and melancholy involved in attempting to represent the past in art.

Both works take politically charged historical moments as starting points and involve real events in their fictional construction. La Décision Doypack is inspired by a real web memoir by retired Australian food-packaging company manager Mackenzie J Gregory, who remembers walking the night-time streets of Paris during the events of May 1968. Failing That uses a moment from an actual documentary about Chile from the mid-eighties, in which an adolescent boy gives a public speech after the death of his father Manuel Guerrero, who had been killed by the military junta.

It is partly because of this connection with real life and real events, events that involve revolutionary turmoil or profound injustice, that the imaginative confabulation and formal artifice of the works themselves is thrown into relief, underlining the pathos and absurdity of our attempts to do justice to the past.

There will be timed screenings of La Décision Doypack on the hour and at half past the hour, from midday until 6pm, Wednesday to Sunday. No booking required.

La Décision Doypack will also be shown at Loughborough University 12-26 May 2008, please visit www.lboro.ac.uk/radar www.lboro.ac.uk/radar for further details.

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Biography
Born Liverpool 1967 Studied 1986-1991 MA Fine Art and BA Painting Edinburgh College of Art, Edinburgh Solo Exhibitions and Projects 2006-07 Lucy Over Lancashire, BBC Radio Lancashire, Radio 1, 6 Music, BBC Cymru and Resonance FM 2004 Know Your Place, firstsite, Colchester 2003 There Are Two Paths, off-site performance, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, Meadow Gallery, Shropshire and Birmingham ArtsFest; Songs and Routines, Reg Vardy Gallery, University of Sunderland 2002 The NWRA Variety Night, Cubitt Gallery, London 1999 Rooney 'Peel Session' John Peel Show, BBC Radio 1FM Group Exhibitions and Projects 2007 Cine y Casi Cine, Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid; Locale - British Artists in Residence, 1a Space, Hong Kong; Nachtschicht, Kulturzentrum K4, Nürnberg, Germany; Women at the Crossroads of Ideologies screening, Stara Gradska Vijenica, Split, Croatia; 2006 Single Shot, Tate Britain and other London venues, touring to fourteen other cities in the UK and Europe; TV Ergo Sum, PULSAR 2006, Galeria de Arte Nacional, Caracas, Venezuela; Walk On, Salon Vogue, Shanghai Biennial; Work in Progress, Freunde der Deutschen Kinemathek, Kino Arsenal, Berlin 2005 Variety, De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea; British Art Show 6, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester; Angel Row Annex at Beatties, Nottingham; and Arnolfini, Bristol 2004 Pass the Time of Day, Gasworks Gallery, London, Angel Row Gallery, Nottingham, Castefield Gallery, Manchester and Collective Gallery, Edinburgh; Shrinking Cities, Kunst-Werke, Berlin 2003 Let Us Take You There, Site Gallery, Sheffield, and Bluecoat Gallery, Liverpool; You Are At Home Here, Lokaal 01, Breda, Netherlands; We Go Round and Round in the Night and are Consumed by Fire, Comme Cá Gallery, New York; Fragmentos, Galeria Casa Gaia, Havana, Cuba; Electric Earth, a British Council show, touring to The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, Radio Laboratory Museum, Nizhni Novgorod, Yaroslavl Museum of Fine Art, Yaroslav, Na Solyanke Gallery, Moscow, and venues in Lithuania, Yugoslavia, Turkey, South America 2002 Shopping (as Common Culture), Tate Liverpool; Palestine International Video Festival, Birzeit University, Qamariyeh Gallery and various venues, West Bank, Palestine; Mappin Open, Mappin Gallery, Sheffield; 2001 Merry Movement, Laforet Museum Harajuku, Tokyo 2000 Pixelvision, Royal Museum Of Scotland, Edinburgh, Lost and Found, Amsterdam, Red/Hull Time Based Arts, Waygood Gallery, Newcastle, Catalyst Arts, Belfast, B16, Birmingham, Dick Institute, Kilmarnock, First Floor, Melbourne 1999 My Eye Hurts, Thread Waxing Space, New York; Perspective 99, Ormeau Baths Gallery, Belfast; EAST International (as Common Culture), Norwich Gallery, NSAD, Norwich

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