Press Information
For her second exhibition at Matt's Gallery, Imogen Stidworthy has developed a new work which focuses on the act of listening to reflect on how we locate ourselves and are positioned in social space. In (.) listening moves fluidly between a state of being and an act, between immersion in and scrutiny of people through their voices.

The installation organises the gallery into spaces related to the office and city streets through different forms of image, inviting the viewer to move through different places and subject positions. Subjective and political implications of the voice are reflected in the installation through the figure of Sacha van Loo, who is employed by Antwerp Police to analyse wiretap recordings. Having been blind since birth, for him the world is understood and pictured primarily through sound and his finely tuned listening connects him to others with unusual sensitivity; fluent in seven languages, he is able to recognise hundreds of different accents and dialects. In his job these powers are part of the bureaucratic process of determining guilt or innocence; sifting through scraps of language he decodes speech and designates voices, identities and intentions, blurring the borders between private and public space.

In the installation we hear the text-to-speech voice of Sacha's computer as he searches through files, the murmur of deciphering (screen 2, 3-channel audio), and passing voices which were recorded from his body as he walked through busy city streets (circular booth, 4-channel composition). City streets are seen in a 3D laser scan, a 'point cloud' of millions of positions in space giving a precise mapping of the terrain (screen 1). These use a technology based on sonar, a principle closer to hearing than to vision - a real-life fantasy of territorial knowledge.

A splinter of fiction enters this factual scenario in a passage from Solzhenitsin's novel In the First Circle. In the book a group of imprisoned Soviet scientists and linguists have been commanded by Stalin to develop two machines: a voice scrambler designed to turn sense into nonsense, to protect his personal telephone line, and a voice-printing machine to identify people through paper print-outs made from covert voice recordings.

At the heart of the work is a tension between observation and interpretation, detachment or immersion. Different forms of image which are made and perceived according to different paradigms, open out to a broader question regarding the nature of the image itself, which is present less as a given language than as a process of formation.

With Sasha van Loo

Camera: Ben de Wandel, Imogen Stidworthy
Sound recording: Johan Vandermaelen
Video and sound editing: Imogen Stidworthy
Multi-channel sound editing: Christian Hildebrand, Imogen Stidworthy

Thanks to SEP Engineering

Generously supported by

Return to top

Biography
Born 1963, British. Lives and works in Liverpool Studied 1992–94 Jan van Eyck Academy, Maastricht, NL (Postgraduate Studies in Fine Art) and 1984–87 West Surrey College of Art and Design, UK (BA Hons fine art, first class) Solo Exhibitions 2010 Kunstpavilion Innsbruck, Austria; Arnolfini, Bristol; Barrabackslarrabang Galerie Akinci, Amsterdam 2009 Audio/photo installation The Work, installed in waiting room no 1, Loughborough Railway Station, commissioned by RADAR, Loughborough University 2008 Die Lucky Bush curatorial project, MuHKA (Museum of Contemporary Art, Antwerp 2006 Get Here, Galerie Hohelohe, Vienna 2005 Imogen Stidworthy, FRAC Bourgogne, Dijon; Audio Cab, temporary public art work installed in taxi cabs in Luton, UK 2003 The Whisper Heard, Matt’s Gallery, London 2002 Dummy, Netherlands Film Museum, Amsterdam; Substitutes, Gallery K&S, Berlin; o.T., Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, Germany 2000 closing/close by, Spacex Gallery, Exeter 1998 Filmblik, Haags Filmhuis, Den Haag, NL 1997 To, Hedah, Maastricht, NL 1996 Elocution, De Vaalseberg, Rotterdam, NL 1995 Clitic, Plateau, Brussels 1991 Transparent Thing, Cambridge Darkroom Gallery, Cambridge Selected Group Exhibitions 2010Art Sheffield 2010, Sheffield 2009 Niet Normaal - Difference on Display Beurs van Beurlage, Amsterdam; XXX Get off at Edge Hill Metal, Liverpool;See This Sound Lentos Museum, Linz, Austria; Zacherlfabrik, Vienna; Soundmuseum.fm Arco, Madrid, Spain 2008 Next Up The Bluecoat, Liverpool; What I Hear in Powerplant, Liverpool; Shrinking Cities Cube, Manchester; Moves 08 Festival of Movement on Screen 2007 documenta 12, Kassel; LOOP Art Fair, Barcelona, Spain; Thessaloniki Bienniale; Vienna Art Fair 2006 Walk On, Shanghai Bienniale; Spool, Het Consortium, Amsterdam, NL; Rogue Wave, FACT, Liverpool, UK; 36 Seconds, BBC Big Screen, Liverpool, UK 2005 7AM, Frieze Art Fair: Artists Cinema, touring UK cinemas Jan-March; SENEF, 6th Seoul Net and Film Festival, Korea; Be What You Want but Stay Where You Are, Witte de With, Rotterdam, NL; Dutch - non Dutch, Van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven, NL; murmur, TENT centre for contemporary art, Rotterdam 2004 How do we Want to be Governed, Art Central, Miami; Shrinking Cities, Kunst-Werke, Berlin; Becks Futures, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London and Centre for Contemporary Art, Glasgow; With Hidden Noise, Henry Moore Institute, Leeds; Versions, Kunsthal Bergen, Norway 2003 Lux Open, Royal College of Art, London; Programme of 16mm short films, LUX, London 2002 ALEX, Galerie Jan Mot/Argos, Brussels; The Pleasure of Language, Netherlands Institute for New Media, Amsterdam; Say Hello, Wave Goodbye, Gallery Hohenlohe & Kalb, Vienna; Commitment, Las Palmas, Rotterdam 2001 Biennale de l’Image en Mouvement, St Gervais, Geneva; Power and the Subject, The Central House of Artists, Moscow; Exploding Cinema, Museum Boymans van Beuningen, Rotterdam, NL 2000 Desperate Optimists, Festival aan de Werf, Utrecht, NL; closing/close by, Video Positive, Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool 1999 Searchlight; Consciousness at the Millenium, CCAC, San Francisco; Verbindingen/Jonctions, Fondation pour l’Architecture, Brussels; Fantasy Jacoba IV, Kote Kanal, Brussels; and... and... and..., Het Consortium, Amsterdam 1998 Adventurers, Cartographers, Storytellers, Fundacio la Caixa, Barcelona; Nexus, Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria; 52nd Edinburgh Film Festival, Scotland; Biennale de l’Image, Centre Nationale de la Photographie, Paris 1997 To, as part of World Wide Video Festival, Stedelijk Bureau Amsterdam; Fenêtre sur cour, Galerie Almine Rech, Paris; Prix de Rome Exhibition, Netherlands Photo Institute, Rotterdam 1996 Up Close and Personal, Philadelphia Museum of Modern Art, USA; New York Video Festival, Lincoln Centre, New York; Foriegn Bodies, Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel, Switzerland; Erasa una vez... Del Minimum al Caberet, Teatro Central, Seville, Spain 1995 Auto Reverse, Saint Gervais, Geneva; International Video Festival, Reina Sophia, Madrid; Points de Vue, Images d’Europe, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Palais des Beaux Arts, Brussels; MUKHA, Antwerp 1994 Achteinhalb (Eight and a Half), Raum Aktueller Kunst, Vienna; Steierischer Herbstes, Graz, Austria; Monolith, Lettered Rock, Witte de With, Rotterdam Collections Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; FRAC Bourgogne, Dijon; MuHKA (Museum for Contemporary Art), Antwerp; Private collections in Holland and Israel Awards Becks Futures 2004; Prix de Rome 1996, The Netherlands Residencies 2008/9 Instituto Buena Bista (IBB), Curacao 2001-2002 Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, Germany Commissions 2009 RADAR, Loughborough University, UK 2008 What I Hear Powerplant, audio installation in Calderstones Park, Liverpool 2006 Rogue Wave 10.2 surround sound commission, FACT, Liverpool 2005 Art in Historic Places: temporary public art work at Dunstable Downs and De Bray Mausoleum, Bedfordshire, commissioned by English Heritage and The National Trust; Amovie short film commissioned by Film London (through SpaceX Exeter and LUX, London), distributed in cinemas nationwide January-April 2006 2000-2002 Public commission for a permanent video installation at the new regional administration building, Steiermark, Murau, Austria. Architect: Wolfgang Tschapeller,Vienna