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Lookup NU author(s): Professor Louise WilsonORCiD, Professor Jane Wilson
This is the final published version of an exhibition that has been published in its final definitive form by Getty Center, The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2017.
For re-use rights please refer to the publisher's terms and conditions.
'Sealander’ 2017 Amount of Funding: Cost of shipping works from London to Los Angeles. Source of Funding: J.Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles collectors Mark Fehrs Haukohl and Gregory McKeever Collaborators: Mark Fehrs Haukohl and Gregory McKeever, 303 Gallery, New York.Start Date: February 14th 2017 End Date: July 2nd - 2017Associated PGRs: NA“Sealander’’Jane and Louise Wilson Two person presentation in the Focus gallery of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, of the work “Sealander” an installation comprising of 4 large black and white photographic works taken along the Normandy coastline, of the bunkers that formed part of The Atlantic Wall, including 3 large scale articulated yardstick measures and film projection of the film installation “Sealander” and to also give an artist talk. The works from the '' Sealander'' series were photographed along the Normandy coastline during the summer of 2006. The images were very much inspired by a text written by J.G.Ballard for the Guardian newspaper, the title of the text was '' A Handful of Dust ''2006, in the article Ballard writes about the bunkers that were built by the Nazi Organisation Todt during W.W.II as part of the Atlantic Wall defense and fortifications. I was inspired by Ballard's writing...where he compares the brutalist architecture of these once functioning bunkers to'' being as indifferent to time as the pyramids''. I was stuck by the compelling dystopia of these modernist brutalist structures a truly failed utopia but at the same time an architecture that was so popular in 1950's Britain with post war brutalist inspired developments in many bomb damaged cities and new town developments. I shot these works in black and white because I wanted to heighten that sense of abstraction and abandonment, in some of the images its difficult to work out whether the bunkers are falling into the sea from the coastal erosion or emerging from it. I felt to document these works in colour with blue skies and yellow sand would trivialize the images and normalize the abstraction and sense of displaced time that I wanted to invoke.
Artist(s): Wilson LA, Wilson JB
Publication type: Exhibition
Publication status: Published
Year: 2017
Venue: Getty Center, The J. Paul Getty Museum
Location: Los Angeles, California
Media of Output: Photographic Installation with Sculpture
URL: http://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/sealander/
