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Urban Landscape and Memory

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Urban Landscape and Memory

Sala Chillida
Bizkaia Aretoa
Avenida Abandoibarra, 3
48009 Bilbao, Spain

Stephen Carter, Anne Eggebert, John Seth - Central Saint Martins UAL
José Marie Herrera, José Antonio Liceranzu – Facultad de Bellas Artes UPV 

Urban Landscape and Memory - Bilbao

At a distance (Bilbao), 2014

series of fifty pencil and watercolour drawings on paper each 28.8 x 18 cm
(overall dimensions variable)

This work extends a body of drawings from Google Earth using both aerial and street views; drawings which test the distinctions between distance, experience and the representation of place. Google prompts us to nose around before our arrival, drifting along the streets of the city we intend to visit, so that, when we do eventually arrive, we are oddly familiar with this place – a digital deja vu prompted by our avatarian precursor. Our digital pre-encounters are further troubled by the facial voids we are offered by Google, the blurred people of the city – many returning an erased gaze. The people of Bilbao slide across the scene, in and out of seasons, in and out of view: there in front but not behind, here complete, there warped, fragmented. The multiple eyes of the camera car provide us with memories of this urban landscape that stutter across the city; the doublings, the absences, the erasures remind us that memories are not to be trusted.

The exhibition runs Monday - Friday until 30th October 2014.