Agnieszka Polska, "Untitled", 2012, C-print. Courtesy of the artist/CSW Warsaw
Edinburgh's Hope Park Gallery hosts a show of works by the contemporary Polish artist known for her characteristic technique of appropriating found footage to recast perspectives on the past
Jointly curated by Agnieszka Gryczkowska and Paul Robertson, Nonsense Syllables fits into a contemporary current in art of appropriating found footage and archival materials. The curators cite Frederic Jameson's "historical amnesia" and Hal Foster's assertion that contemporary art is becoming characterised by an "archival impulse". According to Foster, "artists are often drawn to unfulfilled beginnings or incomplete projects, in art and in history alike, that might offer points of departure again". These borrowing techniques can be seen as a way to deal with a fluid view of history in which mercurial perspectives form an unstable, uncertain vision of the past, as well as of the ever-evolving present falling back into the past.
As Gryczkowska writes in her curatorial statement,
Polska’s dreamlike, subtle images intermingle autobiography with art history, fact with fiction. Her work is a poetic reflection on historical events and information which has been lost or reshaped by time. [...] She investigates issues of memory, especially gaps in memory and their connection with misunderstandings or misinterpretations of works of art. For Polska, such misunderstandings offer new meanings and new creative values.
Gryczkowska also remarks that the reprisal of hidden or neglected archival materials "plays a crucial role in the formation of individual and collective identity and raises interesting issues with regards to memory and forgetting" that are equally relevant to the past as to the present and the future. The effect of Polska's method is a deliberate misreading of an existing medium, replacing an otherwise nostalgic air with new functions and meanings that stray, in varying measures, from that of the existing material.
Polska (born 1985) approaches art as a librarian or archivist, taking forgotten materials and using them for her own purposes. Her films were screened at the Calvert 22 Gallery and at the Tate Modern in London in 2012, alongside a retrospective of documentary films about Polish sculptor Alina Szapocznikow. In July 2012 she was announced as one of the 20 finalists for the Pinchuk Future Generation Prize.
For her first solo exhibition in Scotland, she presents her work across a range of media, along with a new in-situ work that was initially prepared for the Pinchuk Art Centre, entitled Five Short Videos (2012). Consisting of several installations, the project balances between the sculptural aspect of an installation and the impact of Polska's visual lexicon in film. It is a poetic culmination of sorts for the artist's recent work, as it incorporates fragments of her earlier works that had been rejected in the process of editing. The scope of interpretation is further extended as she refers back to her own creative past and recasts earlier found footage, a concept that is particularly remarkable in our contemporary culture of information overload, detached learning and perpetual forgetfulness.
Agnieszka Polska - Nonsense Syllables is on at the Hope Park Gallery at Summerhall in Edinburgh between the 8th of March - 18th of May 2013. Summerhall is the city's largest, most modern arts venue, hosting festival events and open to the public all year round. In summer, it is one of the main venues for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. For more information, see: www.summerhall.co.uk
Author: Agnieszka Le Nart
Source: Summerhall press release, curatorial statement, own sources
Thumbnail credit: Agnieszka Polska, "The Kiss", 2012, C-print. Courtesy of the artist/CSW Warsaw
02.04.2013