GATESHEAD.- BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead presents the work of British artist Hannah Collins (born London, 1956), known for her large unframed photographs and installations that create immersive spatial experiences. This exhibition in BALTIC’s Ground Floor gallery reveals Collins' capacity to convey the emotional and psychological aspects of cultural space and social history.
The first room introduces Collins' vast unframed prints whose physical and material presence envelops the viewer. Selected from different periods of her career, the works explore scenes of apparent inhabitation, incorporating notions of loss, time and transformation. In early works such as Thin Protective Coverings 1986, the artist has used everyday furnishings, mattresses and cardboard to create imaginary spaces that provide comfort and refuge. Family 1988, is an image of a home-made speaker system placed in Collins’ studio – text, surface and scale are examined and the resulting silent image speaks both of sound and relationships.
Other large-scale works include Signs of Life (section), Gypsies 1992 – a detailed image of the old city walls of Istanbul where migrants appear to sleep amongst the ruins of previous cultures – and The Road to Mvezo. Reading – Umtata, Mandela's Teenage Home, National Monument 2007-8, the result of a journey to Mandela’s birthplace in Mvezo. Collins was taken to a hut that was Nelson Mandela’s home as a teenager. She has created an image containing a bookcase, spare oil can and floating feather on the floor; the objects seen against a rough wall record a notable mental space that is simultaneously valued and abandoned. In smaller works, the theme of transformation and the poetic are more explicit. In Grapes 1989, a bunch of balloons become hanging grapes, caught between the imaginary and the material and the viewer is invited to mentally occupy the fragile paper surfaces of the works.
In the adjacent gallery, The Fertile Forest 2013-5, is a horizontal stream of images in a series of vitrines around the perimeter of the room. The installation itself becomes sculptural and poetic. Each image records a plant used by the Inga and Cofan tribes with whom Collins lived in the Amazon rainforest in Colombia. The plants are the means by which the tribe remain physically and spiritually healthy, each serving a purpose – from curing headaches to maladies of the soul. In some cases the plants enable hallucinogenic journeys on spiritual planes and 'telepathic' communication with others. Accompanying the images, screenprinted texts on the walls of the gallery relate the mental journey of the artist whilst under the influence of hallucinogenics and in the company of the shaman.
HANNAH COLLINS was born in London in 1956 and studied at the Slade School of Fine Art (1974-78) following which her career was established in the UK with solo exhibitions at Ikon Gallery, Birmingham (1988); Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (1989); Chisenhale Gallery, London (1996); Cornerhouse Gallery, Manchester, (1996); Contemporary Art Centre, Glasgow (1996); Sprengel Museum Hannover (2015); Camden Arts Centre, London (2015). Having spent many years living in Spain, Collins is now based in London. She was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1993.
This exhibition is organised in association with Camden Arts Centre, London.
