Can an image plane be traversed like the threshold of a building, moving from inside to outside and back again? And if so, what are the effects of this movement? Have our bodies become so used to crossing the image plane that they accept and absorb the shrapnel of this collision? What does this kind of co-existence with images mean for our social relations?
This exhibition attempts to explore the effects images have on the body, our sense of belonging and our relationship to others. Using the title of the show as a departure point, The Non-Living Agent is a description of the space between us and an image. Similar to the walls of a building, images create spaces in which we live, places of sensation and memory. Images push back at us by showing what we long to be and how we live in this world.
The Non-Living Agent includes James Richards’ 2014 Turner Prize-nominated moving image and sound work Rosebud, Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc’s moving image work An Italian Film (Africa Addio) and new commissions from Auckland-based artists Dorota Broda and Sorawit Songsataya.
The title for this exhibition is taken from André Bazin’s 1960 essay The Ontology of the Photographic Image.
Press
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