01229 825085
Art Gene, Bath Street, Barrow-in-Furness,
Cumbria, LA14 5TY England, UK
RL Wilson – Raven/Glass
The Digital U came back from a short hiatus to present the work of artist RL Wilson, one of the artists exhibiting in the postponed ‘Extreme Views 2020 Exhibition’ in the Art Gene Gallery.
Wilson has a multidisciplinary practice that spans the medium of landscape, from moving image through to theatre design, radio broadcast, and live performance.
In this reconfigured version Raven/Glass, 2013 (Single Channel version – 2015), RL Wilson roots his conceptual framework in the sense of place, in this case the brackish waters through the looking glass of his coastal estuary house in the north of England.
The hissing, the buzzing, the churning of life, the tranquillity of the day. The gradient into night. The day passes, the telly squeals the normal rubbish. When one day sets another rises across the hemisphere. It’s just another day, but beyond this Wilson feeds into the local narrative of the estuary myth that has been shaped by the British isle.
Historically the boundary between the open world and Briton are the blackish waters of the isle’s many estuaries, seeing the likes of the Romans, later the Vikings and many other premodern historical visitors. In the case of Folklore, once again these habitats act as points of entry to worlds beyond ours – they were keepers of the unknown. In modern times, these environmental landscapes speak of simpler times and the escape from bustling metropolitan urban centres – our gateway to freedom beyond capitalism.
It is within this discursive narrative where RL Wilson compounds his chronicle, adding to both the modern and ancient myth of Ravenglass.
RL Wilson’s Raven/Glass was the fifth exhibition within the Digital U’s Extreme Views Pt.2 online exhibition series, exploring environmental collisions.
Sunrise and sunset illuminate the ancient and modern myths of a coastal estuary- through a reflective, reflexive, and playful experience. The domestic and the universal, migration and occupation, the earthly and the ethereal, are unpicked, abstracted, then slowly re-connected- using image and sound recorded in the space itself.
Raven/Glass (2013) (Single Channel version – 2015)
RL Wilson
Practice is multidisciplinary; working with sound, live performance, theatre design, radio broadcast, text and the moving image.
Work is firmly rooted in a sense of place- with each project related to a particular site or location.
Previous commissions, performances, screenings and exhibition have included West Coast Photo, Cumbria, Yorkshire Sculpture International, Leeds, Soundcamp, Cumbria, and at the National Railway Museum, York, The Crucible, Sheffield, HOME, Manchester, London Short Film Festival, Whitechapel Gallery, and the V&A Museum.