LADA marks its 15th anniversary in 2014, which we are celebrating with a series of initiatives across the year. Our anniversary activities provide an opportunity to reflect on the seismic shifts in Live Art practices and discourses that have taken place since 1999 through the lens of the Agency and its work. Look out for special events, online activities, and publications with some of your favourite artists.
For LADA’s fourth 15th Anniversary limited edition print, the performance maker, artist and writer Tim Etchells has produced a limited edition lino-cut print. The text which comprises the work reads simply LOOK AWAY, the letters formed as negative space in the bold red print.
Over the last six years, Etchells has created a series of text works, prints, neon and LED pieces which often explore contradictory aspects of language – the speed, clarity and vividness with which it communicates narrative, image and ideas, and at the same time its amazing propensity to create a rich field of uncertainty and ambiguity. LOOK AWAY is almost a manifesto piece for Etchells – a work that demands attention and the active engagement of reading but which at the same time attempts to negate or prevent its own consumption. A language act which appears to undermine and contradict its own status as statement, LOOK AWAY also pulls us to the heart of a confusion about its own double meaning; in one sense inviting us to look away (cease looking, avert the gaze) and in another extending an invitation to ‘look away’ (look all we like, look to our heart’s content). Viewing the work, we’re caught in a circular set of transactions between the text, meaning and the object, pulled back and forth in a spiral that playfully questions our roles as readers, viewers and spectators.
Finally, Etchells’ LOOK AWAY speaks directly and pertinently into the context of LADA’s Anniversary editions, drawing attention as it does to the flows of attention and address, and the dynamic pulls and pushes of watching performance itself.
Proceeds from the print sale will be shared between LADA and Tim Etchells, supporting both LADA’s artistic programmes and Tim Etchells’ artistic practice.
Print specifications:
Edition of fifteen, signed and numbered
Dimensions: 56x76cm
Lino cut print; archival and acid free paper
Information on other 15th Anniversary limited editions