Proxy

Documentation of solo exhibition titled 'Proxy' by Louisa Martin, at Bluecoat, Liverpool until 24th June 2017.

Proxy starts with a 10 minute looping soundtrack to which a single club light is programmed in a choreographic sequence. The colour, beam size, speed and direction evolve with the sound, which is typical of the digital synths you hear in dance music; up-lifting. But in Proxy it never quite becomes a song. Instead it becomes a siren, a wake-up call to a heightened state, an invitation, a rhythm, and also a synthetic voice. A spotlight searches the floor like a kind of robotic consciousness, it also dances around the room, brings your attention to different parts of the installation, and then finally ends as a kind of cold, blue moon overhead. The glass sign work is of two intertwined red torsos and a blue beam from above; this idea of a higher state meeting the form of the body. This relationship with electricity and light, tacky iconography of transcendence, ecstasy. The hanging fabric cut pieces are intended as a washing line of potential bodies, of out of use layers, to be reminiscent of x-rays, internal scans, patterns for clothing. They are oversized and odd, semi-recognisable, flat, shadows.

the name ‘Proxy’ refers to the way that the installation is conceived as a body, one that is consisting only of physiological states which continually evolve, and therefore a body that can be transferred into and between people; the body of the visitor is a proxy or stand in for the body of the work. The visitor also enters into the body of the installation; a doubling, a standing ‘in the name of’ something impossible or something usually denied.

Listen to the 10 minute sound work here: https://soundcloud.com/louisamartin_artist/proxy/s-nxNhA