Awesome

Inaugural artist in residence project

Opening preview: Friday 31 March 2006, 5.30

The Physics Room is proud to present a new installation and video by internationally recognised artist Ayşe Erkmen, The Physics Room's inaugural 2006 Artist in Residence. Erkmen divides her time between Berlin and Istanbul, and is renowned for her subtle spatial interventions in gallery and outdoor spaces, where she engages with the architectural, historical and cultural contexts of an exhibition situation. She transforms the environment, bringing the focus of attention to the way we, as viewers, experience space.

This new installation is a result of her six-week residency in Christchurch. Erkmen has removed everything from the space, adding only coloured blinds to each of the gallery's large windows. Here she addresses the context of this exhibition space, with its large windows that encroach on wall hanging space, and highlights the view outside to the city and hilly landscape beyond. The semi-transparent blinds, in a mix of shapes and colours, infuse the space with sublime coloured light.

Accompanying the installation is a video work that brings together photographs taken from a database of landscape images. These generic photographs are dislocated from their origins, and reveal nothing of the actual locations. Instead they are generic representations of the landscape, anonymous and banal.

Erkmen's recent exhibitions include Busy Colors, Sculpture Center, New York, USA, 2005; Under the Roof, Ikon Gallery, UK, 2005; and Durchnasst, Schirn Kunstalle, Frankfurt, 2004.

Ayşe Erkmen's residency at The Physics Room is generously supported by the Goethe Institut.

The artist will present an illustrated talk at The Physics Room on Saturday 1 April, 2pm. This will be an opportunity to hear more about this exhibition within the broader context of Erkmen's artistic practice.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a full colour catalogue available mid-April.

Reviews, Essays & Articles
awesome
Ayşe Erkmen
RDU interview with Wammo, RDU mornings, 30 March 2006

The View Out My Window: Ayşe Erkmen as The Physics Room’s 2006 Artist in Residence
Presto, May 2006
McIntyre, Sally Ann. 

awesome RDU Radio Advert
Broadcast during April 2006

Impermanence
Listener, Vol 203, No 3445, May 20-26 2006
 Wood, Andrew Paul.