LAURA GANNON
A HOUSE IN CAP MARTIN

08.09.07 - 30.09.07
Preview Thursday 6th September 7-9pm

Whitechapel Project Space presents a newly commissioned two-screen film work by Laura Gannon entitled A House in Cap Martin .

To produce the work, Gannon gained access to E1027, a seminal modernist house designed by Eileen Gray situated in the South of France, and currently sealed off from public view. The building is steeped in a troubled history of disputes and vandalism, personal tragedy and artistic violation. It has become the centre for a feminist re-evaluation of modernist architecture, specifically in response to the occupation of the building - both physically and theoretically - by Le Corbusier, who without the permission of Gray, painted a series of murals on the walls of the house. Texts by theorists such as Beatriz Colomina have reclaimed E1027 from within the legacy of Le Corbusier, and highlighted the potential pitfalls in the renovation and conservation of the building, which is currently in dilapidated stasis.

Gannon's work engineers a visitation of the location by three characters - an elderly woman and two middle aged men - who, despite not seeming to take on specific roles, bear a distinct relationship with the biography of the house. Using the split between two screens to present different temporalities, and interiority and exteriority, she offers an indication of a narrative heavily mediated by filmic production. The location is at once a product of historical detail and the stasis of conservation, and a site for a curious mode of reflective re-enactment.

Laura Gannon has exhibited at Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery, Dublin, Bloomberg Space, London and in the National Gallery of Albania, Tirana, and was selected for EAST International in 2001.

Whitechapel Project Space acknowledges the financial support of the Arts Council of Ireland, Culture Ireland and The Elephant Trust in making this exhibition possible.