Zabludowicz Collection Invites: Ollie Dook

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Zabludowicz Collection is pleased to announce its first Invites exhibition for 2019 by London-based artist Ollie Dook. Of Landscape Immersion is an installation which builds on Dook’s recent body of work examining the power relations of looking, particularly at non-human animals. The work draws on the language of zoo design and the construction of artificial environments created as imitations of natural habitats, placing the audience within their own viewing enclosure. First commissioned and presented at Jupiter Artland, Edinburgh in 2018, the work has been re-imagined for the space at Zabludowicz Collection, to heighten the tension between observer and observed.

The high definition computer animation pulls together a range of references from BBC nature documentaries, vintage recordings of the circus to the logs and chain props used for the entertainment of animals living in naturalistic cages, offered up for human entertainment. The installation enacts the principles of landscape immersion that strives to blur the space between the animal and that of the viewer. Yet, through his use of two-way mirrors made translucent and reflective through a sequence of synchronised lights, Dook reinforces the viewer’s complicity and empathy in this spectacle, as reflections of one’s self are layered over images from the video, as well as those observing you.  

As part of his exhibition, Dook will present a screening programme of documentary, artists’ films and found material that has directly influenced the work and expands on his interests in the way we consume and construct images of animals on Sunday 24 February.