Artists: Danica Dakic, Dominique Hurth,
Willem Oorebeek & Aya Ben Ron.

Curated by Imogen Stidworthy & Patrick Henry.

BLACKOUT considers the relationship between viewer and (photographic) subject. What is at stake in this relationship, and to what extent do they constitute each other? In BLACKOUT the presence and nature of the subject is brought into question, even to the verge of disappearance.

With his ‘BLACKOUT’ series, Willem Oorebeek works on found, industrially produced images lifted from the circulating mass. He covers them with a layer of black screen-printing ink, at once hiding them from view and drawing us into a search for the image behind the surface. Danica Dakic’s short video ‘Emily’ places us in the charged space between a young deaf girl and her teacher, as she is inducted into the signs and facial expressions of sign language. Filmed over
a two year period, in Aya Ben Ron’s video ‘Shift’, we witness the relationship between family members and carers, and people in vegetative states – people whose level of awareness is entirely obscure. In ‘Un Cup D’Ull’ (from Catalan, meaning ‘a glance’), Dominique Hurth combines archival photographs with text to reflect,
in highly personal terms, on how what we see is incorporated into broader historical narratives.