Documents & Lies

Documents & Lies presents the work of four artists living in London, England. Although not photographic, the works point toward a number of photographic notions about truth and reality. The works on display use conceptual strategies to alter real documents and establish new relationships with them. Their particular use of traces — reproduced, modified or simply invented — allows for the transition from a collective history to another, more personal one. By generating doubt, these artists question what is commonly understood by the term “document."

Douglas Gordon's 30 seconds text utilizes a scientific text that attempts to determine how long life continues after a body is decapitated. Mathew Jones presents a re-reading of Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past through his highlighting of almost every sentence with a pink marker. Cornelia Parker's Tarnish Drawings present handkerchiefs carrying the residual markings from tarnished silver objects that belonged to famous people such as Charles Dickens, Henry VIII and James Bowie. Steven Moore manipulates the chemical reactions of paint to render images in a way that mimics the processes of photo emulsion used in photography.

André Martin’s signature is evident in the content of this exhibition — a reflection of his own sensibility as an artist — that includes an interest in literature as material for visual work, in the idea of reality and trace, and in the presence of ambiguity as a way of animating art.

Guest curated by André Martin