Spurn, Narrow Neck. High tide. Photo: Sabine J. Bieli
Artist Sabine J. Bieli hosts her Fr-Agile exhibition at South Square Gallery, Thornton, Bradford from 6-28 February.
Produced during an artist's residency at Spurn Point (Humber Estuary), Sabine J Bieli's three-dimensional video sculptures subtly recall centuries of slowly shifting sands and reflect the fragility of a historic coastline.
Spurn Point is a narrow spit of land on Yorkshire's Holderness coast separating the North Sea from the Humber Estuary. This three and a half mile line of sand and shingle is a place of continual change – of constant erosion and reformation. Spurn, a Nature Reserve, is also home to the only permanently manned lifeboat station in the UK.
During the summer months of 2008 Sabine Jeanne Bieli took part in a research residency, 'On Spurn' exploring how water, wind and tides shape the peninsula. This residency led to a performance drawing attention to Spurn's shifting movement over the past 150 years. Four yellow buoys were placed on the shoreline of the North Sea beach of Spurn, marking the location where the estuary side of Spurn once existed in the 1850's. The buoys were then exposed to the powerful forces of nature during a wet and blustery day in August 2008. The process, lasting from low to high tide, was documented on video by Jo Millett, who also took part in the residency.
Now as an installation at South Square Gallery, funded by Arts Council England's Grants for the arts programme and Humber Mouth Arts Festival, extracts of the video are projected onto curved semi-transparent screens. Bieli has meticulously laced together unwoven warp threads to form architectural screens that stretch between the gallery wall and floor. As the projected light hits these screens, a spectacular three-dimensional video is produced, where flowing waves run through the space, along the web of threads and undulate against the gallery walls.
Weaving and video, two seemingly contrasting techniques, have been combined to reveal a fascinating affinity. Interlacing lines reflect a mesmerising and binary nature of weaving that is believed to have led to the development of cyberspace and a digital age of immateriality.
Sabine J Bieli studied textile art and design at the 'Schule für Gestaltung' (Basel/CH) before going on to work in costume workshops, building sites, metal workshops and hospitals, all of which have influenced her formal practice as an artist. Her sculptures and installations, a body of work that now spans the best part of a decade, have been described as 'spatial drawings'. However, unlike a drawn mark her 'woven' lines never fully solidify, they explore the space between the idea and the realisation of form. Ultimately, Bieli's work also demonstrates a subtlety of approach that belies a meticulous methodology and research.
Jo Millett is an artist working with film video and sound, often making site specific installations as well as single screen work. Concerned with temporality and reception, her work has been shown widely in the UK and abroad. She is based in the South West and recently commenced a practice-based PhD at University College Falmouth.
For more information visit Sabine J. Bieli or South Square Gallery
