Unit 2 Gallery

SALOMÉ VOEGELIN
HELIODOR

11 March - 22 April 2005

The Swiss artist Salomé Voegelin has been developing a reputation for her fascinating stand-alone audio work and video installation which scrutinise the nature of leisure activity and more specifically what she refers to as its apparent 'purposelessness'.

The starting point for much of Voegelin's work revolves around recording 'real' life events such as interviews with hobbyists or impromptu filming of familial places of leisure such as a beach, boating lake, ice-skating ring or pony-show. However, rather than merely presenting such scenarios as documentary truth or as a mocking indictment, through a complex series of 'studio production' techniques, which include the use of sound effects, and sampling from radio, cinema and television archives, Voegelin's work alludes to a far wider set of formal and conceptual concerns.

For her first solo exhibition, Voegelin presents the sensory installation Heliodor (2005) alongside her recent video, Gallant Boy (2004). Bringing together the disparate worlds of golf and science fiction, leisure and pornography, these works offer an intriguing and satirical take on fiction as reality, challenging the relationships between the aural and the visual, the viewer and the spectacle.

A brochure accompanies the exhibition with an essay by Matthew Arnatt.

Salomé Voegelin was born Basel, Switzerland 1972. In 2004 she was awarded her PhD from Goldsmith College, University of London. She has exhibited in a variety of exhibitions including QSL, Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (MIMA), 2004; Death Of Romance, Ganton Street, 2004; Perspective 2003, Ormeau Baths Gallery, Belfast; Last Dance, Annely Juda Fine Art, London, 2003. She currently lives in London.

The exhibition has been supported by London Metropolitan University, Pro Helvetia (Arts Council of Switzerland) and the Swiss Cultural Fund in Britain.