A Conspiracy of Clippings – Alex Dipple

Opening reception: 10th March 2011 6.00 – 9.00 pm
 
Exhibition dates:   11th March 2011 – 3rd April 2011

Thur – Sun 12.00 – 6.00pm or by appointment
Closing event:  1st April 2011 7.00 – 10.00 pm

Informal artists talk and discussion evening with a short film screening.

Alex Dipple is captivated by the transitory architecture of newspapers and periodicals. Punctuation, and visual tools such as ‘info graphics‘ and the use of colour, once intended to help readers navigate and prioritize content, become the subject of her work. Text boxes, horizontal rules and punctuation are sliced from their source and distilled into dense microbial groups. These conspiracies of clippings are re-arranged to fill spaces that hint of infinity, and to a stillness left by the settled dust of yesterdays media blizzard.

These works are durational and iterative. Collected over months and years each dot, box or line is as specific as the text from which it was lifted. The tiny fragments establish physical relationships with obscure documents and newsprint ephemera. Fleeting design anomalies that evolve over periods of time, often to disappear abruptly, focus and impose restraints on Dipple’s practice.

For this new installation and her debut solo show in London, Dipple will show a new body of work and create two new installations glued directly onto the gallery wall and destroyed at the end of the show. Dipple will construct a unique line of dashes and hyphens and a new piece, some 3 years in planning, using the blue horizontal rules cut from the Travel supplement of the Weekend Guardian. The work is a growing archive of marks and signs often barely registered, but subliminally embedded.

‘The wall of rules will reference the precession of stars in a North African night sky. Gaps and links suggest distance, starlight and movement.’

These works reference Islamic art. Its’ search for the transcendental through mathematics and pattern making. It explores a longing to intensify experience and an understanding that the storm of media data is corrupted by the fragility of the materials used and the physical presence of the artist in every cut and placement. The laborious and robotic process also references Albert Camus’ existential idea of ‘rebellious repetition’ whereby action creates conscious immersion in repetition to subvert the recurrence and absurdity of daily life.

To accompany the exhibition, A conspiracy of clippings, Alex has created an artists edition of ‘All the dots 3. The Freedom of Information Act 2000’. ‘All the dots 3’ uses this iconic document as a jump off point. Here all irrelevant information is removed or ignored and the text is reduced to its most basic component, the dot. The missing words haunt the space and the finished piece becomes a delicate balancing act shaped by unseen forces. ‘All the dots 3’ creates a coherent and appropriate political statement to both Dipple’s wider body of work and to our current global times.

Dots and Full Stops 1 2007