Frith Street

Fiona Tan

15 Sep - 28 Oct 2006

FIONA TAN
Short Voyages
15 September - 28 October 2006

Frith Street Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of new works by Fiona Tan, one of the most acclaimed contemporary artists working in film and video. Tan's work often portrays individuals and groups of different cultural, ethnic and social backgrounds and deals with themes such as identity, memory and the perception of cultural difference. Moving between documentation, fiction, biography and fantasy. Tan always acknowledges that the camera, rather than being a neutral instrument of recording, is a means of subjective interpretation.

Central to the exhibition is a two screen video work titled The Changeling. The first screen shows around two hundred images of anonymous Japanese schoolgirls while on the second screen one has been singled out. The single portrait is accompanied by a monologue about a fictive girl's reflections on herself, her own life and that of her mother and grandmother. Each time this work is shown the spoken text is translated into the local language so the work constantly shifts in nuances and meaning.

Fiona Tan's A Lapse of Memory, a video work commissioned by The Brighton Photo Biennial, can be seen in the Gardens of the Royal Pavilion, Brighton from 6-29 October. Fiona Tan: The Brighton Photo Biennial

Fiona Tan was born in Indonesia in 1966. She studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie and the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunst in Amsterdam where she currently lives and works. She has had numerous solo exhibitions including Mirror Maker, Brandts Klaedfabrik, Odense, Denmark (2006) and touring, Countenance, Modern Art Oxford (2005) and Correction, MCA, Chicago (2004).
 

Tags: Gerrit Rietveld, Fiona Tan