Installation, slide projections with sound, 1999
Addressing the issue of war, the installation is a combination of projected still images and sound, involving the viewer in a complex narrative of memory and loss.
Visible from outside as well as inside the exhibition space, anonymous faces from the past, snapshots taken by young GIs of each other as they relaxed from fighting in Vietnam, were projected on to long rolls of tracing paper. The images were caught on the paper and then passed beyond it, beaming out through the gallery window, reflected time after time in other windows of shops and office in the street outside. The faces of the young men, in blurry black and white, mysterious interlopers from a half forgotten time, were reinserted into the everyday world of the street.
At the back of the gallery space, a single image of children looking at the crater made by a bomb in the street was projected onto the target board of a real basketball stand. A recording of a basketball in play echoed through the gallery space, the staccato sound as it hit the floor repeatedly uncannily like that of gunfire.
Market Place Gallery: Steve Roper, Adrian Curwen
Curator: Jean-Paul Martinon
Sound recording and editing: Ian Hill
Installation photography: Edward Woodman
Installation video: Roger Karshan