Archive 2010-11
Melissa Gordon
- Venue: Fine Art Lecture Theatre
- Start: Wed, 16 Feb 2011 11:00:00 GMT
- End: Wed, 16 Feb 2011 13:00:00 GMT
Melissa Gordon is interested in how historic images and narratives are used and represented, and in the assumptions about them that exist and continue to evolve. In her works, perspective in a literal and figurative manner is utilized to explore ways in which imagery is perceived and reproduced. Surfaces are often composed of research reconfigured into logic systems which are painted or printed in combination with three dimensional constructions which frame, interrupt and direct a viewing. Recent installations have focused on developing a language in which an exhibition relates to the experience of a theater in the round, using the structure to examine the inherent theatricality of viewing mediated moments in history.
In the recent exhibition Collisions, in collaboration with the artist and stage designer Jessica Wiesner, works illustrating the gesture of the reveal within theatre using rigging systems, curtains, and light to create a sense of composition and layered space, were correlated with the way a press image is constructed- through editing, reproduction, and mimicry. Gordon's works are inherently involved in the 'flatness' of painterly space. The classical task of painting, as the early Renaissance architect Alberti describes, is “…to represent with lines and color …the visible surface of any object upon any given (plane) in a certain position from the center of vision”, i.e. presenting something flat which resembles objects in space. In utilizing this rule to present flat surfaces in space, both in works and installations, often the pieces change depending on the viewers position, underscoring the ongoing relationship in viewing between seeing, memory, and recognition. Melissa Gordon lives and works in London and Brussels.