Grand Opening

Backlit are proud to announce our grand opening, and present:

Main Gallery

Dan Tombs

Studio Gallery

Simon Raven

Project Space
Defunct (curated by Tom Duggan and Alia Pathan)

We are very pleased to host ANNEXINEMA with artist film and video from around the globe.

Dan Tombs presents a cinematic panning shot of a seemingly alien landscape, both hazily unfamiliar but recognizable through our collective visual memory. This landscape is actually the artist’s adoptive home of Norfolk where he has studied and worked since 2003. Recorded on an PXL 2000 (an obsolete form of video camera), which records directly on to audio cassette tape, this use of defunct technology questions the artist’s control over the image. Tombs’ work undermines contemporary visual perception and the role of the director in creating images, which are uncontrollable. Tombs believes that the machine is “ an equal and valid collaborator to the image.”

Private View: Friday 17th October 7pm onwards
Sat 17th -Tue 20th: 12pm –5pm. Admission free: open to public

[Show as slideshow]

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Defunct is a show hosting art that explores shortcomings, existentialist enquiries, and creates nostalgia for imagined places or events.

Shortcomings and inadequacies have been bought to the fore. In some works the Artist undertakes an arduous or unnecessary task; in which success seems like an inappropriate means of judgement. These ideas of inadequacy are also present in works that create a substitute for the self, better-than-the-artist embodiments that have imagined potentials for brilliance. The works that are concerned with the self are not direct portraits or biographies; Defunct draws together artists who discuss themselves by what they are not (capable of).

Alternative places and existentialist questions are assembled from within composed landscapes of imagery and phrases. Charged and ambiguous statements are made in a suggestive and uncertain manner, which talk about quite different subjects.

Having a preoccupation with an obsessive or excessive act and employing perfectionist behaviour seem to be consistent methods of creation. Whether these works come from fixed frames of mind or from minds with ambivalent attitudes, the intention to achieve or progress is no less depleted and our efforts continue with the belief that progress is important and is what follows frustration.

In a search for fulfilment of something we only assume can be fulfilled as a rationalization for the effort used to complete it, these artistic endeavours leave a residue of poised propositions and restlessness.