Last night of Jazzfest 2015, featuring "Outside the Box"
Press clippings from the Studio 21 exhibition: "Outside the Box":
Four Videos, Four Stories by Chandreyee Ghose, Kolkata Gets its First Video-Installation Show in The Statesman, When the Body Speaks by Rita Datta, and The Power of the Face Through Video Art by Abhijit Ganguly.
The gallery staged a symposium on experimental cinema in response to the show. The symposium featured contributions from film makers and artists including, Anik Datta, Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury, Suman Mukhopadhyay, Uma Ray, and Sourav Roy Chowdhury, and was covered by the Telegraph India.
I gave a talk about my work at Studio 21 on the last day of the show, and later in July to students at Calcutta University. I spent last week at Kala Bhavan, Santiniketan, speaking to students and faculty in the new Centre for Interdisciplinary Arts. I hope to return in the winter to give a series of practical seminars and show some work.
STUDIO21
presents
Outside
the Box
An exhibition of new video works by
Paul Holmes
June 19 - July 3, 2015
Opening June 19, 6 p.m
Saturday, July 4, 2015
An interactive discussion with the artist
Time: 5.30 pm - 7 pm
Looking forward to your
active participation.
Manas
Acharya
(Curator-Coordinator)
Studio 21
17L, Dover Terrace, Kolkata
700 019, Tel:2486 6735
website:
www.studio21kolkata.com
Paul
Holmes (b.1966) spent
two decades as a director, making dozens of hours of programmes for the BBC and
the other major British TV channels, and films that were distributed around the
world in festivals, on DVD and on television. In 2012 he redirected his
practice towards visual art.
By manipulating the duration and rhythm of the moving image, his work
exposes structures of movement and meaning that are unseen in standard time
frames. He uses still images, film, graphics and sound to transform our
understanding of modes of expression and viewing, and of narrative and
performance.
Paul Holmes
also teaches at the School of Arts and Creative Industries, Edinburgh Napier
University.
Outside
the Box
An
exhibition of new video work by Paul Holmes.
This solo
exhibition for Studio 21 gallery, Kolkata contains four video works developed
over the last three years:
Outside the
Box, the exhibition’s eponymous work, is a study of the facial ticks and tells
of guitarist Haftor Medbøe's Scandinavian jazz band as they navigate the half-rehearsed
landscape of a jazz set. Over the course of an hour's performance, the
unflinching gaze of the camera gives a tantalising glimpse of the agonies and
triumphs of creative inspiration.
True to the
long-standing relationship between performance and video art, two of the works
involve Paul Holmes himself as the model.
In “Time Machine”, a high speed camera is trained on the artist's face
as he subjects it to the most punishing of facial workouts. The result is
a study of facial movement in super-slow-motion and a commentary on our desire
to slow the process of ageing. He also features in “These Measures are for Your
Protection”, a film that responds to the function of stress positions in
history and the role of the photobooth in contemporary society. It uses
editing and sound to create a form of static choreography in which the artist
is confined by the cell-like space of the booth that is capturing his
image.
Inspired by
the pe-eminence of text in contemporary communications, the final film, “The
Persistence of Vision” tells its story direct from the script in a text-ticker
rather than through images and action. This post-cinema format couples
with the script's preoccupations with speaking and looking to raise issues of
the self, the other and language.
Paul Holmes
said of the exhibition: “I am thrilled to be showing this work, some of it for
the first time, at Studio 21 in Kolkata.
I have been a regular visitor to the city for several years and have
always been impressed by the vibrant cultural scene here.”
Paul Holmes
has published an artist’s book, “Outside the Box”, to coincide with the
exhibition. It contains a new essay by
critic Louise Milne, written passages by composer and band-leader Haftor
Medbøe, and discussions between the artist and psychologist Rory Maclean about
the work’s research implications. It
will be available for sale from Studio 21 gallery.
Paul is grateful for the support of the ICCR, Rabindra Bharati
University and the British Council during his stay in India.
UPDATE: Opening night, Friday 19th June 2015. The exhibition was inaugurated by British Deputy High Commissioner Scott Furssedonn-Wood (pictured below top). He said in his speech that "We are lucky to be able to welcome to Kolkata a British artist like Paul Holmes whose innovative work makes us see things in a different light, and changes the way we think about the world around us."
Pictures courtesy of Studio 21 curator Manas Acharya.
Projection tests for 'These Measures are for Your Protection', 'Outside the Box' exhibition, Studio 21, Kolkata, June 2015.
Preparing for the 'Walk on the Line' Environmental Art exhibition at Chander Haat, Kolkata. The exhibition showcases work from a wide range of independent contemporary artists working in the city and was coordinated by Studio 21 curator Manas Acharya.
Meeting with curator Manas Acharya to discuss my solo show, 'Outside the Box', at Studio 21, Kolkata, India.
'Outside the Box' stills from the first grading tests. Grade by my brilliant cinematographer, Alkistis Terzi. February 2015.
Outside the Box postproduction, using a split screen to cut between the players. The split screen will also form the basis of our research project. Entitled 'Involuntary Facial Expressions and the Creative Act', it is an investigation into the relationship between the faces a musician makes during improvisation and the music they are creating. Winter 2014/15.
Outside the Box shoot. July 2014. Production stills, featuring Haftor Medboe, Andrew Lisle, Espen Eriksen and Dave Kane.
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