Lines of Defence, detail Bettina Furnée If Ever You're in the Area Fear of invasion forms the basis of firstsite's latest exhibition and a series of related offsite projects, "If Ever You're in the Area", developed by Cambridge-based artist Bettina Furnée. Ongoing, site-specific works on the Suffolk Coast are complemented by gallery works that explore similarities between differing forms of invasion, militaristic and environmental. The encroachment of the sea eroding the cliffs stands alongside the threat of wartime landings. Known nationally as a letter cutter and public artist, this exhibition presents seven new gallery pieces that take Bettina's practice into new territories. While carved text continues to play an integral role, she launches into ambitious sculpture, installation, photography, film and web-casting. Ideas around fear of attack and rituals of commemoration are explored in small-scale, ephemeral arrangements of objects. Ambiguous titles invite contemplation: "Beachhead", "Lines of Defence", "Plain Sailing", "Beached", "Lost on the beach" and "It's a free country". "The works consider some of the customs and rites we have devised to endorse and protect ourselves and our morality at important moments of change." (Bettina Furnée) The literary content in her work is often created in collaboration with local communities, poets and writers. For "If Ever You're in the Area" she has worked with writers Simon Frazer and Tony Mitton to create phrases like: "Submission is Advancing at a Frightful Speed", for the offsite work "Lines of Defence". Each letter was given a flag and each flag planted, in order, into the cliff near the military defences at Bawdsey, Suffolk. As the cliffs eroded the flags were taken with them, letter by letter, the truncated words flapping above the remains of the crumbling fortifications. Documented via a live web images, 15-minute updates recorded the changing coastline, and the disappearing text. "If Ever You're in the Area" unites the Dutch coastline near the artist's childhood home, The Hague, Holland and Bawdsey, Suffolk on the other side of the North sea - both studded with bunkers, marking historical boundaries between free and once occupied land. Coinciding with the 60th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, the work has wide appeal, using obsolete military defences along the coast, from the Napoleonic period to the 1940's, for inspiration and location. Bettina has worked independently as a letter cutter and public artist since 1989, producing site specific and text based work, mostly made to commission and resulting in permanent pieces within the built environment, such as Victoria Square, Birmingham 1993. "If Ever You Are In The Area" was supported by Arts Council's Grants for the Arts. Exhibition: 18 June - 23 July 2005 Opening hours: Mon-Sat 10 am - 5 pm including bank holidays firstsite @ the minories art gallery 74 High Street GB-Colchester, Essex CO1 1UE Telephone +44 01 206 577 067 Fax +44 01 206 577 161 Email info@firstsite.uk.net www.firstsite.uk.net www.ifever.org.uk |
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