The Way Things Go
by Peter Fischli and David Weiss



Venue : Leeds Central Library, Calverley Street, Leeds
Dates : 8th - 13th October 2001
Times :
Price : Free

Pavilion presents The Way Things Go, by Peter Fischli and David Weiss, at Leeds Central Library as part of an ongoing programme of work promoting the creative uses of new media in public spaces.
Swiss artists Peter Fischli and David Weiss have worked together since the late 1970s, in a collaborative art practice that is both entertaining and disquieting and often makes use of everyday objects. Their highly acclaimed 1987 film, The Way Things Go (Der Lauf der Dinge), is a carefully choreographed 30-minute chain reaction of events, in which ordinary objects erupt, explode, collide or collapse into one another.
In addition to the presentation of existing work to new audiences, Pavilion's artistic programme includes; artists' commissions, publicly-sited art, CD-ROM and website production, cross-artform and community-based collaborations, education and training, and the provision of multimedia production facilities. By initiating and facilitating partnerships between artists, the community and a wide range of partner organisations, Pavilion aims to create fresh opportunities for access to new art for the people of Leeds.


Goin' Back(The birds/The Byrds x 32 + 1)
by Mark Dean



Venue : Leeds City Art Gallery, The Headrow, Leeds
Dates : permanent
Times : 10am - 5pm (except Wed until 8pm and Sunday 1.00 - 5.00pm)

Dean combines the moment when Tippi Hedren wakes up to relive the horror of being attacked by the birds in Hitchcock's classic film with two lines from the song Goin' Back by legendary sixties American group The Byrds: 'I think I'm goin' back, to the things I knew so well in my youth. I think I'm returning to those days when I was young enough to know the truth'. The film clip is slowed down to last the same amount of time as the sample of music, and then both are played backwards and forwards - one bar forward, one bar back, two bars forward, two bars back - until they have progressed through the full thirty-two bars of music. The work casts a strange, new, hypnotic calm over Hedren's moment of horror through its languid, repetitive structure but simultaneously exaggerates and extends each moment of her enactment of fear, the song lyrics working to stress that it is something that resides deep within us on an almost primal level.


Threshold To The Kingdom
by Mark Wallinger



Venue : Leeds City Art Gallery, The Headrow, Leeds
Dates : permanent
Times : 10am - 5pm (except Wed until 8pm and Sunday 1.00 - 5.00pm)

' … the airport doors open; singly or in small groups, incoming travellers (maybe weary, maybe relieved) slowly, weightlessly stride toward the camera and out of view. The images combine with the sharp compassion of Allegri's setting of Psalm 51 to form an allegory with an overwhelming message: these travelers are dead. They've arrived in Heaven; they've been forgiven. At the end of the day, it's all going to be OK.

Threshold to the Kingdom offers an almost ecstatic vision of a compassionate redemption that, if one peels back the surface, proves to be a sham. The airport arrival suite's purification rituals, after all, are authoritarian hocus-pocus: first your freedom of movement is curtailed, then it's conditionally returned to you - so just you be thankful. Every air traveler knows that behind the airport's doors are the beady eyes of the state's border controls and - a small step away, at least for the imagination - the apparatus that devises and manages the UK's immigration and asylum laws. The desperate people who don't make it across the threshold into the promised land (by air or any other means) are screened from view, literally and metaphorically. In most cases, one suspects, their sin is simply to have been unlucky.'

- Rachel Withers (Artforum Summer 2001)


Movement In D Minor
by Alex Baker



gonna learn how to fly (high)
By Nicolaj Bendix Skyum Larsen


Venue : Leeds Metropolitan University Gallery, Woodhouse Lane, Leeds
Dates : Friday 28th Sept - Saturday 27th October 2001
Time : 11.00 - 5.00 (Mon - Sat) / Wed 11 - 7

Alex Baker's installation uses sound to describe and animate a line through space. A row of speakers swoop and curve down walls, as an electronic chord sweeps through them, dispersing notes in each individual speaker, making sound run through space like a ripple. gonna learn how to fly (high) incorporates two projections, Hymn, a video and sound piece and Auto Pilot (Preparations for the Inevitable). Together they form the tale of the rise and fall of NBSL.

Moira Innes (Curator at Leeds Metropolitan University Gallery) writes: 'It is my intention that both installations are regarded as discrete entities. Although the works share common elements, I am not aiming to satisfy one curatorial theme; rather my interest is in the fresh possibilities of their juxtaposition in the galleries. My interest in this piece by Alex Baker is the dominance of sound to define a space - the aural line as a manifestation of the invisible. Such sophistication created with basic and low tech generation equipment provides an enjoyable counter to our technologically advancing world. The work of Nikolaj Bendix Skyum Larsen is deeply absorbing and I found myself willing him to fly (higher). The combination of two projections offers a clever and inspirational balance of emotions - a bizarre sacred humour. Leeds Metropolitan University Gallery is positioned to increase access to the innovative work currently being produced nationally and these two exhibitions advance our policy of showing the work of emergent artists. I feel confident that Alex Baker and Nikolaj Bendix Skyum Larsen are at the start of a very productive and influential career.'