Lives and works in Glasgow & San Francisco FUCKING SELECTED... HELL, YES
Solo Exhibitions
Heavy Influence, Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, Magazine 09, Edinburgh Art Festival, 14–30 August 2009
A Million Lies performance at Reveal/Reset, Edinburgh Art Festival, InSpace, Art Late, Edinburgh, 27 August 2009 (*)
Garlands, The Park Gallery, August–September 2008, with Janie Nicoll with the installation Mineral Park, featuring: Zefrey Throwell, Desirée Holman, Lewis Holleran, Lucy Keany, Anne Colvin, and John Vitale
House/Lights, Park Gallery, May 4 2008
Meddle with the Devil, with Janie Nicoll, Park Gallery, Callendar Park,
April–June 2008
The Consequence, Alex Hetherington and Janie Nicoll, Intermedia, CCA, Glasgow, 2007
HOUSE/LIGHTS (a revival), Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, July 2007
The Fictitious On Kawara, Emerged [chronicler], Glasgow, UK, 2004
Group Exhibitions
Warehouse of Horrors, +44 141, SWG3, Glasgow curated by Ben Fallon, 1-15 November 2009
Embassy Screen, The Embassy Gallery, Edinburgh Annuale, 20 June- 5 July 2009
Sarah Winchester Made Me Hardcore, film screening, File 2009, July–August, Sao Paulo, Brazil
OPA 0.2 Festival, Bios, Athens, Greece, May 2009
I Am Kurious Orange, David Cunningham Projects, San Francisco May 2009 (Curated by Anne Colvin)
Sarah Winchester Made Me Hardcore, live performance, HALLelujah, Glasgow, curated by Janie Nicoll, April 2009
File Rio, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Oi Futuro Cultural Center, March–April 2009
The Colony Room, New Langton Arts/Tart, San Francisco, Sept-Oct, 2008
Fool’s Gold, Caravan of Horrors, the Collective Gallery, Edinburgh, October 2008
Another Roadside Attraction, Shoreditch, London, May, 2008
Hatch, Bradford, November 2008
Live Art Falmouth, Falmouth, UK, June 2008
The Sparky Show, Schroeder Romero / Winkleman Gallery, New York, 2008
File 2007, Sesi Gallery, Sao Paolo, Brazil, 2007
Videononstop, La Isle, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, April 2007
Visions in the Nunnery, The Nunnery, Bow Arts Trust, London, UK, May 2007
Freshfest, Bracknell, UK, January 2007
winterwhite, Pretty Blue Sky, Chicago, USA, December 2006
Magazine, Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, 2006
File 2006, Sesi Gallery, Sao Paolo, Brazil, 2006
60 Seconds of Play, Saltworks Gallery, Atlanta, USA, 2006
With screenings in Atlanta, Savannah, Athens, Georgia & Brooklyn, NY and New Delhi, India
Resonate, East Kilbride Arts Center, UK, 2005
File 2004, Sesi Gallery, Sao Paolo, Brazil, 2004
Members Show, Transmission Gallery, Glasgow, UK, 2000
RC, Albion Street, Glasgow, UK, 1998
Travel Light, Birmingham Arts Trust, Birmingham, UK, 1998, with Fabienne Audeoud
Bibliography
Alex Hetherington: House/Lights, Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, Rosie Lesso, AN Magazine, July 2007
I Am Kurious Orange, David Cunningham Projects, Orlando Santos, Interface, June 2009
Grants/Awards
Creative Lab, CCA, Glasgow, April 2009
Glasgow Visual Arts, 2009
Alt-W, New Media Scotland, 2008
Scottish Arts Council, Professional Development Award, 2007-08
Hope Scott Trust, 2007
Scottish Arts Council, Professional Development Award, 2006
Robert Brough Travel Scholarship, Paris, France, 1990
Projects
Critical Writing
Annette Ruenzler: The power to faint at will - or not, Sorcha Dallas, The List, May 2009
Jimmy Robert, Grey Flannel Suits Any Man, Sorcha Dallas, The List March 2009
AN Interface
The Fifth Floor: Ideas Taking Space, Tate Liverpool, UK, December–February
San Francisco: On Ben Shaffer, Anne Colvin, Julio César Morales
The Way that We Rhyme: Women, Art and Politics, Yerba Buena Arts Center, San Francisco
Joan Jonas, The Shape, the Scent, the Feel of things, Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley
Starship: Written on spiders, Silverman Gallery, San Francisco
Skank Bloc Bologna, Number Two (Langton Edition), Tart, San Francisco
Once Within a Room/Phantom Rosebuds, New Langton, San Francisco
WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution, PS1, NYC
Minty Donald: Glimmers in Limbo, Tramway, Glasgow
Catherine Sullivan, Triangle of Need, Metro Pictures, NYC
Fabric of Protest and Turner Prize 2007, Tate, Liverpool
Three Years and Counting, Tart, San Francisco
Superhumanatural, Douglas Gordon, RSA, Edinburgh
An Magazine
Straylight Cavern, Cooper Gallery, Dundee, AN Magazine, February 2009
Minty Donald, glimmers in limbo, Tramway, AN Magazine, April 2008
Others
Prices, Cathy Wilkes, The Modern Institute, Matt Roberts Arts, London, 2008
On Brigid McLeer, Vexations, Site Platform, Site Gallery, Sheffield, January 2008
Three Years and Counting, Shotgun, San Francisco, September 2007
“All the Wild Children”, essay for Magazine Map, Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, 2007
Catherine Sullivan, CCA, MAP, February 2007
Mark Raidpere, Shifting Focus, Tramway, MAP, November 2006
On Nadim Karam; Gina Saccone; Nina Edge; Adam Nankervis at Liverpool Biennial, Independents, Liverpool, October – November 2006
Like it Matters, CCA, Glasgow, Stretcher, San Francisco, US, 2006
Glasgow International, Stretcher, San Francisco, US, 2005 (www.stetcher.org)
Goya Vs Yoko Ono, Map, Edinburgh, UK, 2005
The Tramway, Shorts 5, Polygon, Edinburgh, 2002
Ellen Cantor, Transmission, Black Dog, London, 2002
Digital Dialogues, San Francisco Art Institute, Stretcher, SF, US, 2001
Stephen Skrynka: Tunnel, Sculpture Matters, UK, 2000
Continuum 001, CCA, The List, UK, 2000
Become Like Me, Stills Gallery, Edinburgh, The List, UK, 2000
Group Show, Transmission Gallery, Glasgow, The List, UK, 2000
Neil Bickerton/Lorna MacIntyre/Knut Asdam, Transmission Gallery,
The List, UK, 2000
Crack is Wack, Transmission Gallery, Glasgow, The List, UK, 1999
Publications
Yuck N Yum, Dundee, April 2009
Praktika, Deveron Arts, Huntly 2008
Fool’s Gold #2, edited by Lucy Keany, Edinburgh, January 2009
Flit Magazine, Portland, Oregon, October 2008
Mineral Park, The Park Gallery, Falkirk, 2008
Fool’s Gold #1, edited by Lucy Keany, Edinburgh, June 2008
The Village Voice, Falkirk Residency, February 2008
Skank Bloc Bologna #1, TART, San Francisco, February 2008
The New York Times, January 2008
The Consequence, Shaking Hands with the Devil, by Sarah Smith, UK, 2007
Notebook, Current Gallery, Baltimore, US, 2006
Prog:Me, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2005
Friends and Friends of Friends, Baltimore, US, 2005
A Million Lies; Once and Only Revealed After Death
Inspace, Edinburgh
27 August 2009
Reviewed by: Orlando Santos
According the dramatic treatment for Alex Hetherington’s new three-channel video and performance work A Million Lies Once and Only Revealed After Death, the action follows a wildly complex narrative including the sea shanty Shallow Brown, who was called shallow because “he was shallow in his heart” written by HE Piggott and Percy Grainger to the life story of eccentric American gun heiress Sarah Winchester who built a sprawling family home based entirely on superstition and a belief she was haunted by the spirits of the gun that made her fortune; an email scam to share in a fortune of twenty dollars following the death of a wealthy engineer based in Nigeria; a job email scam to join the crew of a ship that will sail the ocean on the whims of a wealthy client and the story of American industrialist James Deering and his ornate Miami estate Vizcaya which contained his vast film collection from the Pathéscope archive on now defunct 28mm film stock and the story of a criminal John Deering, who in a bizarre experiment allowed his heart to be monitored during his execution by firing squad. The action moves, in a humorous re-enactment of one of Sarah Winchester’s daily séances, on board Moonbase Alpha from the 1970s TV series Space 1999 where a crew member hallucinating due to extended confinement on the satellite adrift in the universe uses psychic powers to find a habitable planet, he performs the séance in defiance of the base’s Captain who prevents the crew member from using technology to scan for this new ‘home world’. Realizing he has been hallucinating all along the crew member relinquishes his desires. Finally an extract from Jayson Blair’s biography is read; Blair was a disgraced New York Times journalist who was found to have falsified his news reports and features, particularly stories from the first Gulf War. The extract reveals the moment that his employers confront him with his deceptions.
Surrounding this work, and crucial to its reading is Hetherington’s deployment of two film works by the American artist Catherine Sullivan, The Chittendens and Triangle of Need. Hetherington wrote reviews of these works at screenings and installations in Glasgow, Scotland and New York and underlying this treatment of view to review, review to view, from page to screen is an analysis of identity and its theft and corresponding analysis to Nicolas Bourriaud’s thesis on ‘Postproduction’ tactics, which ‘frames contemporary art within the operation of discjockeys’. Hetherington becomes synthetic DJ, remixing Sullivan’s work making it into an element in a play list, where identity, the identity of his broad range of characters, both real and fictional and of Sullivan herself become material to inhabit and dismantle in this exacting screenplay that finally surmises the weakness of identity and its values from external and internal sources: in the email scams temptations or the wealthy industrialist confined to view the world via film stock, the fortunes desired are the same desires that will oppress, that superstition and skewed belief systems will not liberate but confine, the hallucinating crew member disfigured by his desire for escape or Jayson Blair’s news stories desiring reward, fame and recognition before truth and transparency. Hetherington orchestrates inside this work statements about resources and means and in particular to the art world itself. He compares his shooting schedule for his production alongside a brief analysis of Sullivan’s works.
I enjoyed Hetherington’s use of the three screens in the work that orchestrates a series of sequences where he brought together a cast of actors in different period costume to play out multiple roles in white studios and opulent stately homes, to his use of accents, pre-recorded voices and a vocoder to read out the email scams, making them all the more weird and uncomfortable. Equally I enjoyed the running use of Frank Capra’s film It’s A Wonderful Life, edited by the emerging Scottish artist Lewis Holleran. Capra’s film used the line: As though he never existed and this sentiment runs neatly through the work as characters from myth, cinema, theatre, art and melodrama appear and disappear almost simultaneously. The use of the ‘zombie’ physical motif is most pertinent on occasion: the dead from email scams brought to life in tragic circumstances, but who never existed in the first place used as traps to steal the identity of the living. The works speaks of gullibility, vulnerability and fallibility; his screens speak about surface, gesture and empathy and the intention of drama.
As with most of Hetherington’s recent output complexity, a vigour of research and intensity and sensitivity toward synchronizing and colliding disparate materials are key elements to his widening practice, particularly in live art, and in accompanying blog web sites and short run publications, which on the night included a handout A3 print, Sarah Winchester Made Me Hardcore, which lists celebrities with fake names, including ridiculous sounding gay porn stars, stars from rap music, ventriloquists and individuals famed for their duplicity.
These are rewarding experiences, acutely beautiful, intense, and sometimes totally impenetrable.
Writer detail:
Orlando Santos is an American writer currently based in Europe
Venue detail:
Inspace
Crichton Street, Edinburgh UK EH8 9AB
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