Event for a stage Event for a stage

Known for her stunning works in film, drawing and photography, internationally renowned artist Tacita Dean now turns her talents to theatre, sound and voice in a world premiere presentation. Event for a Stage (2014) explores the dynamic relationship between the aural and visual realms in film and theatre. It is a spirited contribution to the unfolding history of art and theatre collaborations and continues Dean’s inspirational investigations into the imaginary worlds of art and the artifice of theatrical inventiveness, and into the art and skill disappearing from our film world as a consequence of new technologies. Event for a Stage was co-commissioned by and presented at Carriageworks, for the 19th Biennale of Sydney (2014).

Dean has worked prolifically across a diverse range of mediums, including photographs, drawings, sound installations and found-object assemblages. Perhaps best known for her 16mm film works, Dean is fascinated by time and by the notion of things disappearing and becoming obsolete, whether it is technology, architecture or objects. The very material Dean uses to create much of her work, 16mm film stock, is gradually being discontinued, a sad reality the artist reflected on in Kodak (2006), shot in the last remaining Kodak factory in Chalon-sur-Saône, France, which closed shortly thereafter.

Dean’s early works provide the background for Event for a Stage, this newest direction in her artistic journey. Trying to Find the Spiral Jetty (1997) created a fantasy journey, through sounds and effects, of Dean and her companion travelling to the famed site of Smithson’s art relic. Foley Artist (1996), a major sound effects score of elemental and ambient weather sounds, indicated Dean’s early interest in creating ‘theatre of the mind’. Here, Dean examined the disappearing art form of Foley, where practitioners use a variety of everyday materials such as cardboard and pebbles to generate sound effects for radio, television and cinema. Eight speakers placed around the room gave the illusion of movement to the drama, while an illuminated dubbing chart featuring the eight separate soundtracks and a storyboard allowed viewers physically to watch the story unfold. A monitor showed a video of Foley artists Beryl Mortimer and Stan Fiferman creating the recorded sounds in a studio, and a 16mm magnetic tape machine stood as a mechanical tribute to the pre-digital era. By focusing on the sound effects and their method of production, Dean drew attention to an art form in danger of disappearing entirely with the advent of digital technology.

Fatigues (2012), a series presented at documenta 13 (2012), saw Dean return to chalk drawings, a medium she first explored 20 years earlier as a postgraduate student at the Slade School of Fine Art, London. The series is composed of six large-scale drawings that Dean created as an alternative to unusable blind footage filmed in Kabul, Afghanistan. The title of the work refers to the conflict in the region, and also to the artist’s state of exhaustion after months of work to deliver FILM (2011), a piece that was commissioned as part of the Unilever Series for the Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern, London and recently shown at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne. Dean created FILM with a technique requiring extensive manipulation of negatives called aperture gate-masking, an artisanal method created and patented by the artist. The 35mm negative is passed through the camera and exposed multiple times, resulting in composite images that are meticulously built up layer by layer. Dean explores the physicality of film as a medium, celebrating the analogue process and the unique aesthetic qualities that are integral to her work. FILM is, in part, a tribute to the techniques and materials from the past that are slowly disappearing from our present.

Nominated for the Turner Prize in 1998, Dean has been the recipient of a number of prestigious awards, including the Aachen Art Prize (2002), the New York Guggenheim’s Hugo Boss Award (2007) and the Kurt Schwitters Prize (2009). Recent solo exhibitions of Dean’s work include ‘Tacita Dean: Fatigues’, Marian Goodman Gallery, New York (2013); ‘Tacita Dean: Five Americans’, New Museum, New York (2012); ‘The Unilever Series: Tacita Dean’, Tate Modern, London (2012); ‘Craneway Event’, Galerie Marian Goodman, Paris (2010); and ‘Tacita Dean’, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne (2009). Selected group exhibitions featuring Dean’s work include ‘Looking at the View’, Tate Britain, London (2013); ‘First Act’, Museo Tamayo, Mexico City (2012); ‘Staging the Archive’, Museu de Arte Contemporanea de Elvas, Portugal (2011); ‘The Cinema Effect: Illusion, Reality and the Moving Image’, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC (2010); and ‘Haunted: Contemporary Photography/Video/Performance’, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2010). Dean participated in the Venice Biennale in 2003 and 2005 and documenta 13 in 2012.

Known for her stunning works in film, drawing and photography, internationally renowned artist Tacita Dean now turns her talents to theatre, sound and voice in a world premiere presentation. Event for a Stage (2014) explores the dynamic relationship between the aural and visual realms in film and theatre. It is a spirited contribution to the unfolding history of art and theatre collaborations and continues Dean’s inspirational investigations into the imaginary worlds of art and the artifice of theatrical inventiveness, and into the art and skill disappearing from our film world as a consequence of new technologies. Event for a Stage was co-commissioned by and presented at Carriageworks, for the 19th Biennale of Sydney (2014).

Dean has worked prolifically across a diverse range of mediums, including photographs, drawings, sound installations and found-object assemblages. Perhaps best known for her 16mm film works, Dean is fascinated by time and by the notion of things disappearing and becoming obsolete, whether it is technology, architecture or objects. The very material Dean uses to create much of her work, 16mm film stock, is gradually being discontinued, a sad reality the artist reflected on in Kodak (2006), shot in the last remaining Kodak factory in Chalon-sur-Saône, France, which closed shortly thereafter.

Dean’s early works provide the background for Event for a Stage, this newest direction in her artistic journey. Trying to Find the Spiral Jetty (1997) created a fantasy journey, through sounds and effects, of Dean and her companion travelling to the famed site of Smithson’s art relic. Foley Artist (1996), a major sound effects score of elemental and ambient weather sounds, indicated Dean’s early interest in creating ‘theatre of the mind’. Here, Dean examined the disappearing art form of Foley, where practitioners use a variety of everyday materials such as cardboard and pebbles to generate sound effects for radio, television and cinema. Eight speakers placed around the room gave the illusion of movement to the drama, while an illuminated dubbing chart featuring the eight separate soundtracks and a storyboard allowed viewers physically to watch the story unfold. A monitor showed a video of Foley artists Beryl Mortimer and Stan Fiferman creating the recorded sounds in a studio, and a 16mm magnetic tape machine stood as a mechanical tribute to the pre-digital era. By focusing on the sound effects and their method of production, Dean drew attention to an art form in danger of disappearing entirely with the advent of digital technology.

Fatigues (2012), a series presented at documenta 13 (2012), saw Dean return to chalk drawings, a medium she first explored 20 years earlier as a postgraduate student at the Slade School of Fine Art, London. The series is composed of six large-scale drawings that Dean created as an alternative to unusable blind footage filmed in Kabul, Afghanistan. The title of the work refers to the conflict in the region, and also to the artist’s state of exhaustion after months of work to deliver FILM (2011), a piece that was commissioned as part of the Unilever Series for the Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern, London and recently shown at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne. Dean created FILM with a technique requiring extensive manipulation of negatives called aperture gate-masking, an artisanal method created and patented by the artist. The 35mm negative is passed through the camera and exposed multiple times, resulting in composite images that are meticulously built up layer by layer. Dean explores the physicality of film as a medium, celebrating the analogue process and the unique aesthetic qualities that are integral to her work. FILM is, in part, a tribute to the techniques and materials from the past that are slowly disappearing from our present.

Nominated for the Turner Prize in 1998, Dean has been the recipient of a number of prestigious awards, including the Aachen Art Prize (2002), the New York Guggenheim’s Hugo Boss Award (2007) and the Kurt Schwitters Prize (2009). Recent solo exhibitions of Dean’s work include ‘Tacita Dean: Fatigues’, Marian Goodman Gallery, New York (2013); ‘Tacita Dean: Five Americans’, New Museum, New York (2012); ‘The Unilever Series: Tacita Dean’, Tate Modern, London (2012); ‘Craneway Event’, Galerie Marian Goodman, Paris (2010); and ‘Tacita Dean’, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne (2009). Selected group exhibitions featuring Dean’s work include ‘Looking at the View’, Tate Britain, London (2013); ‘First Act’, Museo Tamayo, Mexico City (2012); ‘Staging the Archive’, Museu de Arte Contemporanea de Elvas, Portugal (2011); ‘The Cinema Effect: Illusion, Reality and the Moving Image’, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC (2010); and ‘Haunted: Contemporary Photography/Video/Performance’, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2010). Dean participated in the Venice Biennale in 2003 and 2005 and documenta 13 in 2012.