A dramatic new artwork - Kerfuffle - by leading artist
Liz Rideal goes on display on Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Broadcasting House in London's Regent
Street from Thursday 6 May 2004.
The huge piece (22 metres x 15.4 metres), created by enlarging tiny
composite images taken in a photo booth, shows the artist's hand drawing
back a sumptuous red curtain.
The gigantic photographic image, surely the biggest set of photo booth
photos ever made, covers the 'prow' of the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ's iconic building, currently
undergoing restoration work.
It will remain in place until July 2004.
Liz Rideal explains: "I hope the voyeuristic image will tantalise viewers
- enticing them into a visual game of 'What's behind that curtain?'.
"The red drape plays with the idea of concealing a wrapped Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ
Broadcasting House, prior to revealing a transformed building to the
public.
"I think of the red curtain as a vestige of the theatre and a
relic of the formal painted portrait, manipulated to perform within
the miniature space of the mundane photo booth."
Kerfuffle is the fourth artwork to occupy the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Broadcasting House
site since July 2003 as part of a series of temporary installations
by artists responding to the theme of broadcasting.
The first was Signal by Fiona Rae, the second the winning entry by
nine-year-old Leo Thomson from a nationwide Blue Peter competition and
the third a combination of sound and image by William Furlong called
Acts Of Inscribing.
The Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Broadcasting House initiative is part of a wider Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Public
Art Programme which aims to inspire audiences all round the UK to engage
with art - through Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ broadcasts, buildings and wider community partnerships.
The Broadcasting House Public Art Programme is devised and managed
by Modus Operandi Art Consultants.
Notes to Editors
Liz Rideal - biography
Liz Rideal, born in 1954, lives and works in London and has exhibited
extensively in Europe and the USA since the 1980s.
She also lectures both at the Slade School of Fine Art, London University
and the National Portrait Gallery.
Her work transforms familiar and commonplace objects, creating strange
imagery that surprises and intrigues the viewer.
A pioneer of photo booth photographic collage, she has used the technique
since 1985 to test the boundaries between the real and the imagined.
Rideal subverts the photo booth machine, coaxing it into taking unusual
pictures, juxtaposing the imagery produced in photo-collages, and enlarging
these beyond their original, miniature, composite size.
The series Behind The Curtain, to which Kerfuffle belongs, is one that
exploits the notion of the theatre and performance, as well as alluding
to drapery, the traditional background of the portrait.
These are portraits of curtains in all their luscious ambiguity - compelling
and seductive.
Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ public art initiative at Broadcasting
House
The redevelopment of Broadcasting House by MacCormac Jamieson Prichard
is the flagship project in an ambitious development programme for Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ
property across the UK which includes major new developments at a new
Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Media Village at White City in London, The Mailbox in Birmingham
and Pacific Quay in Glasgow.
Public art is at the heart of the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ's new buildings, continuing the
Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ's long tradition as a patron of the arts.
Since 2002-2003 a number of artists have been invited to respond to
the changing environment in and around Broadcasting House.
As well as the temporary artworks covering the front of the building,
videos have been made by Catherine Yass, Tom Gidley and Brian Catling,
photographers John Riddy and Nick Danziger have documented people and
architectural changes, and sculptor Rachel Whiteread has created a plaster
cast of Room 101, the inspiration for the notorious room in George Orwell's
novel 1984.
The finished piece, Untitled (Room 101), is currently on show at the
V&A.
Modus Operandi Art Consultants is an independent art consultancy which
provides artistic direction and a commissioning service to its clients.
The Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ is not responsible for the content of external
internet links.
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