Kelly Richardson: The Erudition
Edel Assanti is pleased to present Kelly Richardson's acclaimed video work The Erudition for the first time in London.
Richardson's work explores the "hyper-real" through immersive video installations, depicting landscapes that fuse the real and imagined to a visually arresting effect. Subtly doctored with technology, animation and sound, these unsettling portals into otherworldly atmospheres lack any physical human presence, but suggest the residual effects mankind has had on the natural world. Haunting in their post-apocalyptic beauty, Richardson's installations are a resurrection of the Sublime - playing on our deepest fears through awe-inspiring visuals that offer a glimpse into what the future may hold.
Mining the aesthetics of cinema and science fiction, The Erudition presents a lunar-esque landscape with what appears to be an unlikely monument or a proposal, consisting of holographic trees blowing in simulated wind. Entering the realm of fictional reality via a barren, computer-generated landscape, an underlying sense of narrative in the work insinuates that the flickering trees may have once existed in this landscape. The title evokes the possible foreknowledge of environmental destruction, offering not a solution, but rather a bold warning.
The Erudition has recently been exhibited in The Last Frontier at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, and the Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Canada. Richardson currently has a mid-career retrospective on exhibition at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, USA, and the Towner Contemporary Art Museum, UK, with a solo show at the Laing Art Gallery, UK, opening next year. Other recent public solo exhibitions include the Toronto International Film Festival, 2012, and Southern Alberta Art Gallery, 2011. Richardson's work is included in extensive private and public collections, including the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, USA, the Art Gallery of Ontario, Canada, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, USA, and the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, Canada. Born in Canada, Richardson lives and works in Whitley Bay, England.
