Exhibition

MATT WHITE: This is the Place

4 Oct 2008 – 23 Nov 2008

Regular hours

Saturday
12:00 – 17:00
Sunday
12:00 – 17:00
Wednesday
12:00 – 17:00
Thursday
12:00 – 17:00
Friday
12:00 – 17:00

Save Event: MATT WHITE: This is the Place

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Spike Island

Bristol, United Kingdom

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Travel Information

  • 506 via Temple Meads
  • Bristol Temple Meads
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About

Matt White was selected as the recipient of the Rootstein Hopkins Artist's Award 2008, which supports Bristol based artists to develop their first major solo show. In his wider practice he frequently acts as the protagonist of his own work, exploring the physiological effects of self-induced, altered states. From the position of a skeptic White has undergone hypnosis to explore past lives, self-hypnotized to induce the sensation of weightlessness and undertaken an epic journey across Europe in order to recreate the frame of mind of composer Francis Poulenc. These tasks or experiments become the impetus for new works that succeed through their failure to deliver sensationalist or faked outcomes. Instead they become the starting point for a series of processes that pose questions about the nature of belief and the way in which the mind can be manipulated. White also acts as his own cameraman, thus adding to the intensity of the work. Matt White's latest project takes as its starting point two opposing methods of escape; one psychological and one physical. The artist used self-hypnosis in an attempt to free himself from the force of gravity, the result of this experiment is the uncovering of two opposing, highly charged and deeply engaging emotional states. Set against this is a more corporeal experience. The artist identified two topographically similar but ideologically opposed US cities, Las Vegas and Salt Lake City, and a desert location in between. A specific location was pin-pointed in each city; the centre of the Mormon temple in Salt Lake City and the windmill tower of the first hotel-casino to be built in Las Vegas. Using satellite imagery a line was drawn between these two points and an exact central location was identified - 38.45426°N, -113.51852°W, the middle of the Utah desert, the centre of two opposing belief systems; the centre of right and wrong? This desert location forms the centre piece of a multi-screen video work that investigates how altered geographical, physical and emotional surroundings can affect psychological, political and physical change. Matt White is a visiting lecturer at the University of Wales, Newport and former Stanley Picker Fellow. His work has been shown in gallery based group shows as well as screenings at Chapter Arts, Cardiff; Bergen Kunsthall, Norway and Unit 2 Gallery, London. He was selected for the Rootstein Hopkins Artist's Award 2008 by a panel that included Jonathan Watkins (Director, Ikon) and Ian Cole (Rootstein Hopkins Foundation). For more information on the artist, see http://www.matt-white.org

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