JANET CARDIFF and GEORGE BURES MILLER
THE HOUSE OF BOOKS HAS NO WINDOWS
15 October 2008 – 18 January 2009 - FREE ADMISSION
Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller are internationally renowned for their immersive installations, involving film, objects and sound. Their elaborate environments draw the viewer into captivating fictional worlds.
This new exhibition spans the artists’ careers, with seven installations that have not previously been seen in the UK. In their early work The Dark Pool, 1995, viewers weave through a room piled high with books and mechanical devices, triggering strange fragments of sound as they move. In Opera for a Small Room, the artists use the transportative qualities of sound to dramatic effect. Laura Cumming has described the work as ‘Cardiff and Miller’s masterpiece.’
The Killing Machine, 2007, is a theatrical meditation on capital punishment, inspired by Franz Kafka’s In the Penal Colony. The artists’ latest work The House Of Books Has No Windows, 2008, from which the exhibition takes its title, is a silent architecture of words and stories based on a previously unrealised project.
A fully illustrated, two-volume publication accompanies the exhibition containing texts and images of the works exhibited and essays by Fiona Bradley and Jules Youngberg, the artists’ nephew, together with notes and drawings for as yet unrealised works.
Janet Cardiff will be exploring storytelling through sound with children from Rose Hill Primary School, one of Modern Art Oxford’s partner schools, as part of a special project during the exhibition. To find out more click here.
Organised in collaboration with The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh.
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View the press release here.
Watch an interview with Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller on The Culture Show (BBC Two) website www.bbc.co.uk/cultureshow/