Blog
La Mort de l’Arbre / Time Pressure Decay _Update
Here’s a follow up on the screening and exhibition held at the Turner Contemporary and Crate Project Space, Margate last weekend.
Installation shots at Crate project space
Screening La Mort de l’Arbre [Running time 15 minutes] at the Turner Contemporary
La Mort de l’Arbre / Time Pressure Decay
La Mort de l’Arbre / Time Pressure Decay
Turner Contemporary / Crate Project Space
August 15th & 16th
Inspired by a recent residency in the former mining town of Lens, Northern France, this exhibition explores memories of the coal mining industry and the physical traces left upon the landscape. Working across video, writing and sound, Sophie Dixon draws connections between seemingly disparate fragments of experience to examine the unifying power of memory. Resonating with the story of the Kent coalfield, this two day exhibition takes place between the Turner Contemporary and Crate Project Space in Margate.
‘La Mort de L’Arbre (running time 15 minutes) will be screened over the weekend at the Turner Contemporary accompanied by ‘Time Pressure Decay’, an exhibition of photography, text and research on display at the Crate Project Space.
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La Mort de l’Arbre / The Death of the Tree (Running time 15 minutes)
‘Any point of a rhizome can be connected to anything other, and must be. This is very different from the tree or root, which plots a point, fixes an order.’
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus.
The coal mining industry dominated the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region in northern France until the late 1980’s. The abrupt closure of the industry brought irrevocable change to entire communities, forcing them into a political and social struggle still evident today.
In 2012 the Louvre-Lens, a multi-million euro annex of the Louvre, Paris, was built in the former mining town of Lens. Like the Turner Contemporary, the Louvre-Lens was viewed as a catalyst to help regenerate the region through the arts. In the first quarter of 2015 Sophie Dixon undertook an artist residency in the town under the cross-Channel ADRT scheme, one of a series of art-based initiatives associated with the Louvre-Lens.
With its starting point in the striking landscape of Lens, La Mort de L’Arbre connects the coal fields of Northern France and Kent, assembling seemingly disparate fragments of experience to explore the unified significance of what it means to remember.
Still from La Mort de l’Arbre
The Sudetenland
Over the past few weeks I have been continuing to film the village of Srbska and its former residents who were exiled in 1946. This research formed the basis of my work to date, including my split screen film Wunschendorf.
Lar/Home
I’m excited that a Portugese language version of Wünschendorf (2014) was included in this exciting project curated by Paola De Ramos.
Exhibition Lar/Home brought together the work of over forty artists from all over the world answering the question ‘what is “home”?’ through several media including painting, sculpture, installation, sound, photography, video, performance, poems and books. The idea came from organizer and curator Paola De Ramos, who after living in a foreign country for some years, started to ask herself about the physical, psychological and sentimental relationship at each place where she lived and people she met. On going back to her home country, she decided to create an exhibition to investigate further the theme of “home”. In her own home, where she lived for ten years, she invited artists to participate in this project and use all rooms as an exhibition space to show their interpretations and trigger a collective reflection of the meaning of home.
Update from Frame and Reference
Using my residency in Lens as a starting point I’m currently developing a new body of work. I’m excited to announce that I will be showing this work in progress across the Turner Contemporary and Crate Project Space, Margate, this August.
Frame and reference have written a post about my recent residencies and forthcoming shows here.
Residency at Blast Theory
It’s great to be back at Blast Theory this month as artist in residence. They’ve got a brilliant residency programme which I’m making full use of to develop my work from a recent residency in Lens, Northern France. A blog for which can be found here.
51 Zero Voyager
Several of my films will be showing as part of the 51 Zero Voyager film festival this March. The festival is touring a range of artists’ films including a selection from the Film London Jarman Award. The three day event will take place in Lens, northern France.
Click to download PDF poster for event : 51_Zero
Residency in Lens – Documentation
Terrils Jumeaux,Lens
Thibault Jehanne and I have now arrived in Lens and will be carrying out a residency here during March. We are working together to make a film however we both feel that the collaborative and creative processes behind it are equally important. This site will be regularly updated and act as a document to collate our ideas and reinforce reflection within our collaboration.
To visit the site click [here]
Residency in Lens
I’m excited to announce that this March I will be collaborating with French artist Thibault Jehanne to complete a residency in Lens, northern France. The residency is in association with The ADRT 62 – Mission Louvre-Lens Tourisme as part of the ICR (Inter-regional Culture-led Regeneration) project.
We’ll be working together to create a body of process-led work which will later be shown in Lens and Kent. I will be maintaining a blog for the duration of the project, the domain for which will be posted later this month.
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Thiabault Jehanne (Caen, France) and Sophie Dixon (Kent, UK) are cross disciplinary artists working predominately with text, installation, audio and film. Their work has been exhibited within Kent and Northern France and is rooted within site specific projects. Addressing themes of presence, absence, memory and human trace they explore the dialogue between physical location and its interpretation. Exploring ways of interpreting the ghostly traces which lie upon the landscape and crystallising that experience within their process.
The Catlin Guide 2015
I’ve been included in the 2015 edition of the Catlin Guide.
The Catlin Guide is an elegant, limited edition collection of artist profiles, introducing the 40 most promising new graduate artists in the UK. Printed annually, each edition exhibits the artists’ latest work and details future exhibitions, projects and aspirations for the coming year.
The Catlin Guide 2015 will launch at The London Art Fair on 21 January 2015, alongside work by many of the featured artists. The artists are selected for their work shown in the most recent series of BA, MA, MFA and PG Dip final exhibitions where they demonstrate ambition, skill and integrity. The Catlin Guide is distributed throughout the art industry and has developed an excellent reputation as an accurate and exciting overview of new British art. For the featured artists it proves to be a vital springboard, with many going on to exhibit at high profile shows.
The print run remains strictly limited, and we anticipate many collectors rushing to secure a copy at launch. However, the Guide will be available to purchase from Amazon, Culture Label, Waterstones, Blackwell’s and selected art bookshops.
INTERVIEW – Extracted from the Catlin Guide
Q.What kind of art do you make?
I work across various disciplines, including painting, drawing and sound but my current focus is film and writing. I’m interested in the role of narrative in our retelling of the past, particularly the different ways in which we remember – both as individuals and groups. My films use split screens to represent the space that exists between our structured memories and the uncontrollable nature of our surrounding environment. Unlike the stories in documentaries and cinema, our own narratives change constantly and are seldom resolved. It’s this truth that I try to deal with and find a way to represent.
Q. You won the Platform Graduate Award for the film Wünschendorf, can you identify what distinguishes that piece from the documentary genre?
When I started making Wünschendorf, I described it as a documentary. Visually it has similarities to a documentary, but the construction, the unresolved narrative and the physical structuring of the film are designed to illustrate the constantly shifting spaces between memory and place. This is what makes it different. I’m not trying to assemble a narrative; I’m trying to explore and expand upon narratives which are already in place.
Q. You have a background in music, do you compose the soundtracks to your films?
I wrote a score for a short film called Ghosts and my latest work, The Shore, used hydrophones to record sounds from within the sea. Audio is incredibly important to film and is often overlooked. When I started making films I saw audio as secondary to image, now my opinion is reversed.
Q. What are you working on?
This is an exciting year because it feels like there’s nothing to lose. My aim is to work hard and take risk because if there was ever a time to make mistakes, it’s now. I have a number of projects in development, including a new film, a series of audio broadcasts and exhibitions with the 13 other recent graduates selected for the Chisenhale Studios programme, Into the Wild.
sophie-dixon.com