William Scarbrough

Current Review(s)

Forgotten

William Scarbrough at serialworks

'The totally innocent reader is shocked in the end by so many errors committed on both sides … this is because the truth is in no way the ambient element of the investigation: not for a moment does one believe that this compensation of errors aims for the discovery of truth as its final objective. On the contrary, this compensation has its own dimension, its own sufficiency, a kind of equilibrium, or the reestablishment of it, a process of restitution that allows a society, at the limits of its cynicism, to hide what it wants to hide, reveal what it wants to reveal, deny all evidence and champion the improbable'.
Gilles Deleuze in ‘The Philosophy of the Crime Novel’ (Desert Islands, 2004).

William Scarbrough’s 'Forgotten' is a well-crafted composite of ‘straight down the line’ facts and pointed substitutions, each smacking of tough-love styled lessons in media literacy. In what is ultimately a loosely spun story, Forgotten juxtaposes news footage of 9/11 against that of a lesser-known event, the controlled implosion of two gas towers in Brooklyn, New York. Offered as a coincidence, the hype and spectacle of the two events form a backdrop to the story of 15 ‘forgotten’ individuals whose corpses were discovered at an inconvenient time.

The immediate context of the show, serialworks, a multi-purpose exhibition space run by artist/curator Kathryn Smith, couldn’t be more appropriate. As stated in the press release, 'Forgotten' marks a decade of Smith’s ongoing curatorial engagement with Scarbrough and the overlaps between their respective practices accentuate rather than downplay the particularities of the works. Most notable of these is Smith’s proposition of a ‘forensic aesthetics’, which encourages the viewer to take on the role of an investigator and treat the art object ‘as if it were a kind of evidence’.

11 September 2010 - 09 October 2010

Listings(s)

'Forgotten'

William Scarbrough at serialworks

William Scarbrough is an artist whose work is deeply engaged with narratives of violence, signification and ethics as presented in the global media. In his intensely researched multimedia projects, he employs the ubiquity of the media’s visual violence to probe the less spectacular, but no less imperative aspects of emotional, imaginary, physical or psychic violence.

'Forgotten' presents a complex labyrinth of information as an installation in two parts. A series of prints presents fifteen forensic facial reconstructions and a press article related to the events in question. A Flash-interface video projection allows a viewer access to a 25-minute video and other supporting contextual content. Together, these elements offer up a narrative pushed aside in the wake of one of the world’s most iconic catastrophes.

 

 

11 September 2010 - 09 October 2010