Disappearing Into One

Rhythmic clicks and mysterious chilling tones surround a collection of shifting slides projected before you. As you navigate towards the illuminated wall, your shadow warps within the layers of magnified textures and surfaces. In places, your reflected image is lost within the overlay of film. Your impermanence as a   viewer and unfamiliarity with the space that surrounds you is evident.

Laura Buckley and Andy Spence’s two screen video installation, Shields, creates an uncanny feeling that epotomises the character of Disappearing Into One.  

Mystery and deception are explored throughout the group show at the Zabludowicz Collection; an exhibit that leaves you with the eerie impression of being lost within a haunted house. The notion of black magic is a recurring theme in almost every work you come across.

The antique building creates a place in which artwork is to be found rather than displayed. Works within the space seem as though they are artifacts, left behind in an abandoned building. You begin in a large open upper gallery with a view to the hall below. Looking down over the oval banister, you are teased with future pieces that appear to have been left in a hurry. A shattered square lies below you on a raised platform and you question the anonymity of the work that unfolds around it.

Hidden works enhance the mystery and deception of the display from the beginning. In the upper gallery, subtly placed upon the high walls are four lacquered installations. The varnished replications of the gallery windows at first appear as shadows. Luuk Schröder’s, four reflections, evokes the sensation of an unknown and uncertain history, and yet are easy to miss.

As you make your way through the labyrinth like exhibit, works emerge in unlikely places. Lindsay Seers’ photographic pieces Optogram and Backlands are placed in an unnervingly narrow corridor. Within the opposing window an aged, ghostly reflection is created. The doubling of images creates a new depth and illusive identity within the work.

The maze like space concludes in the large oval room upon which you viewed from above.  The curation of the exhibit evokes a sense of déjà vu as it transpires that the show space ends where it began. You find yourself in a large room inhabited with multiple artworks that test the space around them. Michael Dean’s Door series, consisting of two concertina formed blocks of reinforced concrete, block several exits. Dean challenges the space by denying entry and manipulates the viewer’s ability to escape bringing an underlying sense of agoraphobia to the surface.

The multidisciplinary show is populated with a variety of pieces inconspicuously placed without labels. The lack of classification allows the audience to explore the space unaided. You are left to discover pieces such as Erin Shirreff’s film Moon. Passersby could easily miss the works concealment behind a discreet curtain in the lower gallery.

An old book lies torn upon the floor, open at a page depicting a spider. A pin board is fixed to the wall, darkened marks outline where previous artifacts have been removed. A bewitching cane is twisted and propped up against the opposing wall. There is the sensation that you are standing within a space where sorcery and magic was once performed, which the occupant has attempted to conceal in a rushed departure.

Disappearing into One compels the viewer to question their surroundings and the history of what lies before them. The works throughout toy with the concept of the slight of hand and black magic. After migrating though the buildings narrow corridors and twisted staircases, you feel that you have been misdirected around the entire exhibit, ending where you began. Akin to the proverbial Alice Through The Looking Glass, you begin to feel “curiouser and curiouser”…