ArtSway announces the work to be exhibited at New Forest Pavilion during the 52nd International Art Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia. Simon Faithfull, Melanie Manchot, Beate Gütschow, Anne Hardy and Igloo have all been artists in residence at ArtSway over the past ten years and Stanza has been selected by SCAN, which is hosted at ArtSway. The exhibition draws together several explorations of transformation and change as temporal processes, and is an official collateral event of la Biennale.

Simon Faithfull’s three video works centre on the transformative nature of journeys flickering between monotony and transcendence. Faithfull's work twists the mundane into an other-worldly vision, brimming with significance. In Orbital no.1 (2002) a video projection in three concentric circles documents three infinite journeys around London: the Circle Line on London's Underground, the North & South Circular roads and the M25 motorway. ‘44’ (2005), was filmed through a porthole on Faithfull’s ACE Fellowship on the British Antarctic Survey; the slow-burn tedium of long journeys is interspersed with subtle changes and glimmers of ice light. For 30km (2004) Faithfull attached a video camera to a weather balloon, sending it to the edge of space, drawing attention to human aspirations and ambitions to be untied from the gravity that keeps us fixed to the corporeal.

In Melanie Manchot’s most recent video installation Shave (2007) a camera slowly circles around a seated man who has all of his body hair removed by a barber in a painstakingly gradual a n d ritualistic process of transformation. On a separate monitor, running in perfect sync, the image of a bowl, at first full of clean water, gradually fills with foam and hair as the shaving proceeds. In order to keep the structural unity of the performative process intact, the video is shown uncut, as a continuous 75 minute tracking shot. In this subtle and intimate act of transformation, the barber and his subject exchange silent gestures and the work gradually takes on sculptural qualities.

Beate Gütschow’s video diptych, R#1 – R#2 (2007) refers to Jacob van Ruisdael’s Jewish Cemetery paintings (1654, 1655). In response to these paintings Gütschow located the actual cemetery, and filmed footage of the three tombs, which remain to this day. Filming in the New Forest during her residency at ArtSway in 2006, she then sourced individual features of the landscape simil a r to those found in Ruisdael’s paintings to recreate a close approximation of The Jewish Cemetery paintings. Each video is a montage of 10 - 15 individual films, digitally pasted to create a single image. The results are eerie, melancholic video works that reference the original paintings via the unflinching gaze of the video camera lens.

Anne Hardy will exhibit three large scale photographs. These psychologically charged spaces, intended to bring on feelings of both familiarity and unease, explore the human modification of interiors, pointing to the psychological states of their inhabitants and to the real or imagined events that might have taken place within them, and are constructed in front of the camera within the artists studio over a period of 2-3 months. Close Range (2006) positions us in a narrow black room, the results of target practice on the wall in fro n t. Ammunition and cigarette stubs are scattered around, signalling obsessive behaviour and aggression or maybe just boredom. In Booth (2006) numbered telephones in grubby alcoves, surrounded by phone-box ads and video tapes are sumptuously lit and coloured in contrast to the surroundings, creating an air of seduction. In Untitled IV (Balloons) (2005), a dark cellar room filled with balloons and streamers suggests a party, although the detritus, chalk coded diagrams and piles of cigarettes, imply a more sinister celebration.

Stanza works with digital code as a physical material with which to craft interactive ‘paintings’, exhibiting a pair of interactive touch-screen works as part of New Forest Pavilion. Biocities (2003) uses a flooding aesthetic, s w amping the screen and transforming the cartography of the image as if a breathing city changes its terrain. Inner City (2002) uses a stamping and collaging aesthetic, referencing the disconnected and fragmentary experience of urban life. Stanza was selected for exhibition in New Forest Pavilion by SCAN, which is hosted at ArtSway.

Igloo’s Summerbranch (2006) is an exhibition of intermedia works which explore movement and stillness in nature. By means of camouflage and other disguises Summerbranch considers ways in which a person can blend into a ‘natural’ environment represented by the moving image. Igloo’s Summerbranch installation uses the tools of the military-entertainment complex: computer gaming, motion capture, 3D environments and special effects to question what is truth and artifice in our attempts to reproduce nature.

A full colour catalogue accompanies the exhibition with the following contributions: Martin Coomer on Simon Faithfull, Anna-Catharina Gebbers on Beate Gütschow, John Slyce on Anne Hardy, David Thorp on Melanie Manchot, Colm Lally and Cecilia Wee on Igloo, and Charlotte Frost on Stanza. New Forest Pavilion – Local (26 May - 15 June at ArtSway) is a companion exhibition of alternative works from the Venice artists, and, along with ArtSway+10, comprises part of ArtSway’s 10th Anniversary celebrations.