Week Seven De La Warr Pavilion, Ian Breakwell

Third year print makers went on a trip to Bexhill to meet up with tutor Nigel Oxley and visit Ian Breakwell's  exhibition  "Keep Things as They Are"at the De La Warr Pavilion.  I've been to the De La Warr many times and love this modernist icon. One of the highlights of the exhibition was the double video installation "The Other Side" which uses the staircase and balcony of the Pavilion as a backdrop to elderly couples waltzing to Shubert's "Nocturne in E Major", with the distant sound of the waves crashing in time to the pendulum swing of the camera as it pans to and fro across the balcony. It is a mesmerizing and moving piece about ageing, death and loss, filming ordinary people, performing a romantic dance at the end of their lives.

Breakwell's theme of the ordinary continues with his photographic diaries, recording seemingly arbitrary and unimportant events, unlike usual diaries. His "Walking Man" photographs the same man everyday,  viewed from his 3rd floor Spitalfields room, until the man disappears and is no longer seen walking the streets daily. 

I am drawn to Breakwell's idea that someone of no significance is given significance and meaning; that he observes things we take for granted and highlights them.  

Later in the week artist Simon Pope gave a lecture at The Cass, where he described walking as a contemporary art practice.  Pope is inviting people to engage, observe and understand the space around them. I think there is a link between Pope and Breakwell in their desire to imbue that which we take for granted with significance -  a theme which I find very interesting - and which relates to my own work.