Or an Island or a Boat
2013, SE8 Gallery, London
Works included in the exhibition:
Invisible Building, 10 framed paintings (gouache on paper), wooden structure, dimensions variable
Missing Colour, gouache on paper, 111 x 120,
Or a Frontier, 8 paintings (gouache on paper), supported on wood, 110 x 120cm
Flat Sea Blue, 24 paintings (gouache on paper), supported on a wooden board on two pipes
Or an Island, video loop, 4’
Proud Grey, installation in a gallery cabinet including painting (gouache on paper), books and text, 111 x 120 x 52cm
Sea Plane Grey, installation in a gallery cabinet including painting (gouache on paper), books and a print, 111 x 120 x 30cm
Or an Island or a Boat, Two spoken voice soundtracks on a vinyl record
Tina Gverović’s works examine the relationships of unstable, transient subjects and the real and fictional topographies they traverse and inhabit; staged here, the exhibition functions as a memory theatre in which the artifacts perform in the context of the gallery, snagging our own recollection of past encounters. Paintings and drawings, depicting partial figures at work and rest, are displayed on structures in new constellations. These supports introduce a classic, serial methodology of display, but also act as spatial divisions, rehearsing Gverović’s concern with territorial boundaries.
Despite the intentional formality of the arrangement, there is no division between object and support structure; every part of the exhibition – a painting, a frame, a beam, a sheet of plywood, a video-image, has a material presence and a sculptural form that melds deliberate action, process and display. Ambient sound, mediated through spoken voice recordings, rolls words around the air, adding yet another layer, an accretion to the space.
The title references an ambivalence between a nautical craft and a place; one refers to transience and placelessness, the other to stability and permanence. Perhaps the metaphor can be extended to the gallery, to be understood as a ship, an ark that contains a collection of things to be saved from the flood, which has run aground on some hard, distant spit of land. The exhibition is accompanied by a 7″vinyl with a new sound recording by the artist.
Read artist’s notes on Or an Island or a Boat
Or an Island or a Boat
Two spoken voice soundtracks on a vinyl record
A Or an Island or a Boat 5’40”
B Or a Frontier 4’07”
Conceived and written by Tina Gverović, spoken by Sarah Holden-Boyd, and mastered by Stephen Goldsmith.
The production of this record has been made possible thanks to the support of the School of Art and Education at Middlesex University, London; and SE8 Gallery.
Designed by Ben Cain
Or an Island
Video loop, 4’