Anne James on two juxtaposed exhibitions by British and South African artists

Hannah Rickards’ exhibition has the following title: To enable me to fix my attention on any one of these symbols I was to imagine that I was looking at the colours as I might see them on a moving picture screen.

This is the first time key works by this British artist have been exhibited together. Although Rickards developed each piece individually there is a deliberate overlap between them. In each she explores the landscape of perception, language and translation. She explains that “everything within this exhibition is to do with the uncertainty in language and how we might articulate a relationship to something beyond us in this world: musically, verbally, gesturally”. To achieve this she deconstructs her own chosen subjects, breaking them down into auditory, visual or spatial relationships. These she then reconstructs in ways that emphasise the characteristics of each component. The angle at which each piece is displayed makes a contribution too.

The Upper Gallery contains three pieces, each one possessing its own unique qualities and all working well together. By placing coloured gels on the windows, Rickards has manipulated the sources of natural light to the gallery, so that the nature of the light from outside creates specific and intended ambiences.

Central to and dominating the space is an equilateral triangular, a piece whose shortened title is ... a legend, it, it sounds like a legend ... This contains three video monitors with screens of red, blue and green, in and from which interwoven messages are given. This is the first time that this piece has been seen from both outside and inside and the plain formal exterior provides a stark but protective context for the interactive conversations played out within it.

The eye is led from this gallery to the next, Middle Gallery 1, by a straight line of light that manipulates perception and finds its ending in a distant, dark, open doorway. On entering, one is engulfed in an audio installation with a discrete explanatory type-written text explaining the impetus for the creative process. Rickards has expanded eight seconds of a single thunder clap to seven minutes, by creating a musical score from which flute, trumpet, trombone, cello, viola and violin play out the sounds of the thunder. She then reduced the performance to eight seconds, bringing the thunder clap full circle.

Middle Gallery 2 is dedicated to an audio installation Like sand disappearing or something, in which voices project from five speakers on three walls to give their version of events. On the fourth wall are mounted five white cloth-covered panels providing a silent contrast to and an audience for the other three walls.

Comments on, and versions of events in this piece, are amplified and re-emphasised in No, there was no red. This is a two-channel rear projection, HD video sound piece, in which ordinary Americans are filmed in a seminar room contributing statements and views on a mirage that appeared over a local lake.

The exhibition is accompanied by a monograph that examines Rickards’ approach and practice. There will be a live performance of Thunder and a launch of the monograph at St Hilda’s College at 6.30pm on March 13.

The museum has juxtaposed Rickards’ work with a smaller retrospective exhibition of the work of South African conceptual artist Roelof Louw.

Louw’s fascination with and explorat-ion of the difference between physical and mental spaces and the importance he attaches to the spectator’s role is beauti-fully summarised in the central sculp-ture, his seminal 1967 work Pyramid (Soul City), for which he created a pyra-mid of 6,000 oranges. The piece is neatly bounded and framed by wooden lathes, with captions etched on the floor inviting people to take an orange. The dynamic this creates between spectators and the piece and the continuing changes in the piece are engaging, witty and profound.

Hannah Rickards
Roelof Louw

Modern Art Oxford
Tuesdays to Sundays until April 21