December 04 – 08, 2019
2019년 12월 04– 08일
M Gallery, CICA Museum
Watersports
Watersports is Terry Silvester first solo exhibition in Asia and consists of two videos, Fertile (2019) and The Swallowing of a Dog’s Eye (2019). The works are a collaboration with performance artist Andrew Neil Hayes who plays a predominant role in both, as well as the artist’s family and pet dog.
Fertile (2019)
In his latest film Fertile, the artist is invisibly part of the action. His presence is not dispassionate though and there is an idea that anyone watching the film also becomes culpably part of the narrative, despite not knowing how things may unfurl.
A collaging of time and place leads to dislocation and unease as the fractured narratives jump erratically from one situation to another. The leading characters – a child in the first year of his life and a suited and bearded young man – seem fearless in their curiosity. What they see ranges from the prosaic to the elegiac, from the personal to the lyrical. There are passages of extraordinary beauty (the dreamlike underwater scenes) as well as moments of
seeming banality (people wandering through scrubby fields with the rumble of nearby traffic). But full of wonder, all of what they experience is, or will be, somehow significant.
Roy Voss, London
The Swallowing of a Dog’s Eye (2019)
Pissing in the bushes. I was determined to wake up. I’d been wondering around in the upside down for far too long and it became apparent that I was no longer convinced of the line’s location, or indeed its actual existence. There were some obstacles in the way – the threat of injury or illness; the upcoming obligation to perform; self-preservation; the cutting chill of a restless autumn wind. All I was sure of was the necessity to break on through to
the other side.
It was a complete physical sensation. The fabric of clothing gliding over my skin, becoming colder, wetter, heavier as the mud oozed through its fibres. Hair slowly drenched and stuck to my forehead as the smell of decomposition and primordial soup swam up my nostrils. An uneasy salty taste. Blood rushing warm and thick.
Andrew Neil Hayes, Bristol
Terry Silvester
Within Terry Silvester’s films there is a fascination with creating discomfort, producing an uncertainty around the image and its motive, which may lead to apprehension and unease. The work exists in this borderland between the real and the imaginary, the films led by real characters, locations and experiences. Erratic narratives move between the deeply personal and the extreme, and are poetically elevated, and beautiful. The sequences are fragmented and do not unfold linearly, but instead jump from one moment to the next. Time appears to be sculpted. These moments are autobiographical and are drawn from the artist’s own memories and experiences. There is no attempt to hide the artist’s presence and this is integral to the folding and unfolding of the images across time and space. The interaction
between characters and the camera’s lens play a vital role in bringing forth a fragility that transcends the artist’s personal endeavours. Silvester has screened work in galleries and festivals nationally and internationally, including London, Barcelona, Los Angeles and Mexico City. In 2018 he won Best Experimental Film at both UK Cine Fest and Fylde Film Festival.
Terry Silvester, “The Swallowing of a Dog’s Eye “, (2019)