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Lookup NU author(s): Professor Uta Kogelsberger
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This body of work includes 2 videos, a series of photographs and artefacts. Part 1 included the video 'Playing the Cave', Part 2 the video 'South by Southwest'. Part 3 'Never Hatched' was a photographic series. Part 4 was a billboard painting titled 'Cinema One'. These elements were shown across the venues Tullie House, Carlisle; Abbot Hall, Kendal; and the Wordsworth Trust, Grasmere.The works were commissioned by New Expressions 3 an Arts Council England National pathfinder programme that fosters collaboration between contemporary artists and museums.It partnered with the Cumbrian Museums Consortium.South by Southwest was a practice based research project that continues my ongoing investigation into spaces created through desire and their inbuilt failures through the medium photography and video. It juxtaposes of narrative and image. Taking the cue from tragic story of the last golden eagle living in England, I developed a video work and a series of large-scale photographs; the last golden eagle in England lives near Haweswater in the Lake District. He moved here about 10 years ago to live with his female partner. The two birds repeatedly tried to breed eaglets without success. The eggs from these failed attempts are held in the collections of Tullie House. Since having lost his mate ten years ago, continues to build nests of ever increasing size and performs the eagle’s sky dance in failed attempts to attract a new mate. The video work ‘South by Southwest’ superimposes eagle-defined co-ordinates over the majestic landscapes of the Lake District to propose a new kind of mapping where the landscape is defined through the movements of the bird. Read by Dave Walker, an ornithologist who has been following the eagles in the lake district over the past 30 years, the voice over has echoes of the shipping news; it abstracts both the bird and the landscape. The aforementioned photographs of the un-hatched eagle eggs that are part of the collection at Tullie House. Magnified on a scale of 1 to 300 the eggs begin to resemble planets, each bearing distinct characteristics different from the others. The photographs that act as evidence of the eagle’s failed attempts to reproduce bear testimony to unrealized potential, desire, hope and failure. They reference the language of large-scale photographic portraiture employed in the work of Thomas Ruff, except here the portraits are of still lives. Playing the Cave was loosely based on the notion of a stop the rain-dance the video installation ‘Playing the Cave’ was a playful evocation of ancient rituals, myth and man’s desire to gain control over nature. It was developed in response to increase to rainfall due to climate change in the Lake District. Shot in the mouth of a disused mine, during heavy rainfall the video work rejects an the traditional understanding of landscape through representation by going below the surface and looking at the tunnels left behind from one of the most actively mined areas in the United Kingdom. The trancelike, rhythmic and tribal, soundtrack is composed of individual raindrops recorded inside the cave with the help of experimental recording techniques. Each beat triggers a new image. Fractured experience becomes a means of subjugating content to image, image to sound and sound to chance.Cinema One was a painted billboard, based on the collections of Abbot Hall presenting a permanent piece of blue sky to the rainy lake district.
Artist(s): Köglesberger U
Publication type: Exhibition
Publication status: Published
Year: 2015
Venue: Tullie House; Abott Hall; Wordsworth Trust
Location: Carlisle, Kendal, Grasmere
Media of Output: Video; photography; artefacts;
URL: https://utakogelsberger.net/2016/12/12/playing-the-cave-2015/
