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Adagio No.8 : [Solo Exhibition: Video projection and drawings]

‘Adagio No.8’ is one in a long series of portraits of dancers dating back to my work 'The Dancer' of 1990. 'Adagio' was exhibited in an international solo show 'New Lands' at Chi-Wen Gallery, Taipei (http://www.chiwengallery.com/). The exhibition included large-scale score drawings for the portrait in motion. ‘Adagio No 8’ works with the figure within a classical form, creating a physical landscape through the use of moving image, digital media, sound and drawing.

I considered the formal classical movements of ballet within the virtual and actual landscape of new technology. The presence, physical ability and attitude of the person in the new works (Iveta Petrakova) interested me more than the dance itself. As Yeats suggested, the two are possibly intertwined, ‘O body swayed to music, O brightening glance, how can we know the dancer from the dance?’ (Yeats, Among School Children, VIII).

The significance of ‘Adagio No.8’ is to consider the language of ballet through the eye of a lens in a kaleidoscopic form giving the effects of falling and fragmentation, thereby generating a sense of the uncanny, the familiar in a disturbingly unfamiliar form. The work reflects my core research question of the extent to which digital media gives the potential to change the way we see ourselves and others.

The challenge was to put together all of these different elements in portraiture (digital image, the formal and precise movements, the person, the sound, etc.) and at the same time locate another series of forms from the more traditional aspects of portrait representation on paper.

The works were later revised, expanded and exhibited at a range of other international venues, including Beijing in June 2012 and Guangzhou in October 2012 (along with a soundtrack by Roberto Filoseta, University of Hertfordshire).