Kelly Large
Uriel Orlow
Abigail Reynolds
Damien Roach
The Hut Project
Curated by Claire Louise Staunton
Hollywood Wonderland takes its name from the 1947 musical short by Jack Scholl. Only screened as a hidden-extra at the cinema, the film is of two singing and dancing tour guides escorting visitors around the Warner Bros studios. Supposedly showing the visitors films in the process of being made, the tourists are being intentionally tricked – the films that they see being produced are merely pieces of archive footage from previously released Technicolor Warner Bros films.
In the movie there is a two-fold ploy in the act of employing the archived footage that extends outside of the camera’s frame; firstly, as a prop within the structure of a fictive story to fool the visitors; and, secondly, in the fact that real archive footage from previous films from the Warner Bros studios is used. A third revolution comes as the film itself has now become part of the Warner Bros archive. Importantly and implicitly, the film suggests there is an invisible active agent throughout responsible for orchestrating such a set of seamless lies.
The works in this exhibition, demonstrate the artists’ own manoeuvres within established museum collections, archives, libraries and taxonomies. Each of the artists has taken as a starting point catalogued material, organized information or systems and has employed them to meet artistic or imaginative ends. The classifications are composite of the artwork but with altered or destabilized functions. Similar to the film, the third revolution comes when the artworks are then repositioned in a new system of classification through their inclusion by the curator in an art exhibition.
Rather than offering any kind of solution, this exhibition is an exercise in highlighting our dependence on archival and museological devices for access to ‘truthful’ information and our belief in its validity. It also seeks to forefront the agency involved in the construction and maintenance of such systems through artworks.
The exhibition will include commissioned work from Damien Roach and The Hut Project and newly positioned pieces from Kelly Large, Uriel Orlow, and Abigail Reynolds.
Hollywood Wonderland, curated by Claire Louise Staunton, is the eighth exhibition in the Seventeen lower ground floor exhibition space. The exhibition will run concurrently with David Raymond Conroy: It was part of it before. And now.The title of the show is in the Webdings font in all printed matter in an attempt to disrupt the classification of the show according to its title, as it is not recognizable alphabetically outside of a computer.
Installation view, 2009
The Hut Project, Murderous Mary the Biennale Bear, 2009
Artists’ Copy of ‘Project Biennale’, Self-Addressed (on loan from The Unicoi County Public Library, Erwin, Tennessee, USA) inside Elephant’s Foot, 499 Blank Sheets of A3 Copy Paper Numbered 2 – 500/500, Red Valchromat Base, Logistical Error
Uriel Orlow, The Visitor, 2007
Dimensions variable
Single channel video with sound, 15’58”
Jack Scholl, Hollywood Wonderland, 1947
Dimensions variable
Film converted to mpg4, digital screen
Abigail Reynolds, The co-ordinates of ‘Pay’, 2006
(pay-peace-appease-Pacific-payload), from the series Word Co-ordinates
Damien Roach, Top 7 ‘Slacker’ films, centre screen zoom, 2009
Damien Roach, Top 7 ‘Slacker’ films, centre screen zoom, 2009
Damien Roach, Top 7 ‘Slacker’ films, centre screen zoom, 2009
Damien Roach, Top 7 ‘Slacker’ films, centre screen zoom, 2009