Shadows and Lies

Co-exhibitors:

David Cotterrell

For the past four years, Cotterrell had been pondering where one belongs. Searching for a contextual reference, he had found himself cycling through suburbs, wandering in deserts, drifting at sea, and immersed in archives. This series of experimental responses explored the contradictions of dreams, evidence, and perception. Developing his holographic vitrines, exploring the dynamics of game engines, and revisiting his curiosity with shadow projection, he presented a series of vignettes, animations, and anomalies within the gallery. Through an idiosyncratic range of influences, he explored historical storytelling in humble homage to the aesthetics of baroque painting, the irony of Dimitrijevic, and the journeys of Eisenstein. 

Six identical metal stands, each a simple black structure supporting a glass orb that shimmers like an opal of light. Within each vitrine, suspended like the swirl in a glass marble, you could see a swell of water pulses at eye level. Screened on the far wall, a river moved to a matching rhythm, the eye held inches above the water as the far bank slipped in a low rumble to the left. A series of landscape photographs was displayed before the holographic vitrines displaying people, which you observe from man's most vulnerable area, their backs.

For this, his sixth solo show at Danielle Arnaud Gallery, Cotterrell presented an entirely new body of work, which considered the illusion of evidence and his continuous search for context. We were made to experience what the illusions are viewing: vast landscapes which confront human pridefulness and self.