Guided by the echo- Nelson Guzmán.
Continues to 9 August 2008
Colombian artist Nelson Guzmán has been artist-in-residence at Metal for the past three months exploring and investigating the main concern of his practice- the idea of evil, and the ways in which we think and talk about it.
During his residency in Liverpool, he has been struck by the ways in which violent and traumatic events are marked and memorialised in public spaces. The badges worn for lost children, minutes of silence and improvised roadside tributes stood in stark contrast to what he describes as the “daily turnover of victims and atrocities” in the news of his own country.
Guzmán’s project began with the stories he found in local tabloid newspapers, the emotional, sensational language through which their subjects seem distant, unreal, almost fictional. Following these stories, Guzmán visited the sites themselves, sometimes finding physical proof – a gunshot on a pub sign or remnants of a memorial constructed from ribbons – sometimes finding nothing.
The project brings together a diverse range of material, such as newspapers, maps, photographs and notes. They allow the viewer to see through the artist’s eyes, as a Colombian in Liverpool, an outsider navigating a new city by the sites and stories that absolve reason and understanding; where the word ‘evil’ is the simplest answer.
’Guided by the echo’ is a process and not an end point, a journey and a work in progress, which focuses at its very core, on the artist’s understanding of the world as it is experienced.
Nelson Guzmán’s residency is part of Visiting Art’s Colombia-England International Fellowship programme and has been jointly supported in Liverpool by Open Eye gallery.
ARTIST’S TALK: Nelson Guzmán in conversation with curator of the exhibition, Rebecca Lennon at Edge Hill Station on Saturday 19th July 3.00pm
