michael

Michael Curran lives and works in London and has established a growing reputation for a series of video works with a stark visual style that belie a deft and sophisticated handling of complex, often unsettling material. Curran has exhibited at Rotterdam and Video Positive festivals and galleries such as Rhodes + Mann in London. Michael Curran has been commissioned by Picture This, South West Screen and Spacex Gallery, Exeter to produce a new work in response to two historic houses in Devon. This project is funded by Arts Council of England National Touring Programme and South West Screen.

I Can See My Way Home is a two screen video installation that contrasts Killerton House, a thriving National Trust home, and Poltimore House, a ruin fast falling into a state of utter dilapidation. On one screen emerges the caretaker and conservation expert at Killerton, slowly opening the closed shutters in the main body of the house. On the other screen an uncertain torch beam explores the devastated interiors of Poltimore, catching sections of pillar, doorway, cornice and moulding. Sound unfolds between the two spaces in a succession of voices, fragmentary music and stray sound effects. Each space defines and defies the other - decay and dereliction counter pointing order and upkeep. Complimentary and contradictory, they at once threaten and promise the possibility of usurping one another.

Exhibition:
17 April to 12 June 2004, Spacex Gallery, Exeter