The Surveyor: Tris Vonna-Michell

There are six new works in this exhibition. When you walk in, immediately to your left, is a film work work called Sifting A to B: TV Radio, TV Radio, Tuner, Phono, Phono, Tape. The soundtrack is a collaboration between artist Henning Lundkvist and myself and consists of an audio composition that has bits of our dialogue, interwoven with audio fragmentsfrom our listening sessions in which we were listening, sifting through, navigating and interpreting material from my archive that I've been working with since 2020. Subsequently, I made a film piece in which images, slides, were projected with a mirror, which bounced the images around, creating shadow play and refraction. 

As you go through, beyond the video installation, immediately in front or to your left, there is a table installation called Collections & Collaborations (study I). This table installation consists of photographic transparencies presented on LED light boxes. These transparencies are the original slides that came out of the large format camera, they are the result of a long process of archiving and creating constellations or assemblages of material debris, implicit or embedded artworks, personal or anecdotal materials, political or propaganda brochures, newspaper clippings, historical artefacts.

The table installation is placed near the print series titled detritus (compositions I-V), which is five photographic inkjet prints on thin natural paper. As the title suggests, these large format light spectrum abstract photographs are made by close-up shots of twigs and branches, dust, pieces of glass, foil; minute reflective materials.

Further into the space, there are two slide installations. The first one is titled The Surveyor, in which 75 slides are looping.This carousel contains a collection of images that range from close-up images of publications from the British Poetry Revival movement (publishing, experimentations and collaborations by my father in the 1980s) to images of different kinds of artefacts that are seemingly ready to be discarded, but which might also be artworks by my father. Images that jump in and out of value or agency, almost like perishable goods.

The second slide installation, No Key In Situ is a medium format slide projection which has 40 slides synchronized tospeech on speakers. The audio recording is of a property real estate contractor doing the inventory by voice (and not by photography) in which he is moving around my father's studio, describing and activating every asset of the studio; verbalizing its functions, presences as well as absences. Synchronized to the surveyor's monologue is a series of 40 images of photographic and audio materials that were by my father, which are now either merging into each other,disintegrating or being taken over by mould.

The work positioned in the passageway between the front and the back spaces, Retracing & Spooling, is a Telex slide projection, consisting of slides pertaining to various past works that I had been performing between 2003 and 2014, which have been recontextualized into a new travelogue narrative. The last in the show, presented in the back room, Nudging and Spooling, is a digital video installation with six projections and a soundtrack on speakers. It consists of a compilationof digitized film spools after my father which I've interpreted as either part of artworks, family histories, sketches, or provisional works-in-progress that range from the 1970s until the present day. The most recent film works within this installation are works that I've made this year, and which are also included in this exhibition. The soundtrack documentsthe process of making the assemblage for Collections & Collaborations (study I), capturing how objects, images and histories keep falling and nudging in and out of the frame. From the seated position of this installation you have the vistas and soundscapes that make up this exhibition.