Research

YSP – Bill Viola

On Wednesday 25 November I went on a trip to Yorkshire Sculpture Park to see the Bill Viola exhibition in the Underground Gallery and Chapel. The works in display showcased some of his well known video/installation work and a new piece ‘The Trial’, All of these were set in pitch black rooms with the work as the overwhelming main focus of the space.

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One of the biggest elements which hit me about the pieces was the use of sound, sound was used here to create a fully immersive experience. Viola played on an isolated sound which was part of the video/process, magnified and enhanced this to fill the space. Sound here took on it’s own life as part of the work and focused you in on the action taking place within the short video loop pieces.

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One of my favourite pieces featured people walking backwards and forwards through a wall of water, as they moved through it they lost or regained their colour. This was such a simple effect, but within the stillness of the space had huge impact. The process gave the effect of an afterlife or grey void where all colour signifiers were removed, then when they came back through the water it was a process of transformation into a full colour HD image. Water again played a part in another piece of people suspended in water, suspended in space, a space they can exist in a new context of a frozen moment. These looped videos were placed all around the room and gave the effect of ‘Ophelia’ by Sir John Everett Millais, the people were forever frozen in this moment of underwater tranquility and existing in a space between life and death.

Another favourite installation features sheets of muslin suspended in the space and projected on from both front and back, the two videos interwove together and interacted with each other. You could then move around the space and see the videos from different perspectives, offering new experiences on the work. As part of this the videos featured people walking towards the camera, when transferred to the sheets of muslin this made them appear to be physically walking in the space.

Accompanying this in the very end room of the Underground Gallery was the library space, here there were books, quotes and documentary videos of Viola explaining the work. The quotes on the walls provided some great insights into Viola’s thinking:

  • Landscape – projection of the inner space of the mind. Stillness of the outside of an apartment building isn’t still at all, by removing all cues you see from the outside that the inner voices become louder and clearer.
  • Finitude is what being alive is all about.
  • Art exists in the mind of the viewer who has seen it.

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