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Reviews / February 13, 2013

Corin Sworn Gears Up for Venice with The Rag Papers

Chisenhale Gallery, London February 8 to March 24, 2013

Since graduating from Vancouver’s Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in 2002, Corin Sworn has won increasing international recognition. Sworn, now based in Glasgow, is due to be one of three artists representing Scotland at the 2013 Venice Biennale, and as of late her work has been shown at ICA London, among other venues.

On Thursday, London’s Chisenhale Gallery opened what it calls Sworn’s “largest and most ambitious exhibition to date.” Centred on a single new work entitled The Rag Papers—a film, audio and light installation that was partly produced during a residency at Vancouver’s Western Front last summer—the exhibition offers thought-provoking narrative approaches that delve deep into the realm of contemporary storytelling to unlock the hidden memories contained within material objects.

In several of her previous works, Sworn has incorporated found materials, images, films and texts into loosely knit narratives that blur the line between fact and fiction to produce evocative renderings of the recent past. The Rag Papers continues this practice, with a twist—for this work, some footage was intentionally shot by other filmmakers for Sworn’s use, and the soundtrack was composed by someone else as well.

Occupying centre stage of The Rag Papers is a short documentary-style film following the interconnected lives of two fictional characters. Shot within a single room, the film portrays a man and a woman in the same space at different times.

The woman, who enters the residence in search of something, encounters objects including wilted flowers, glass ornaments and archival photographs, which conjure up memories from a personal past. Her flashbacks, signified by footage of airy gardens, sorting depots and secondhand-clothing warehouses, act as formal disruptions within the film’s disjointed chronology.

The man, who is introduced through a series of first-person close-ups, is revealed to be the room’s primary tenant and author of an important document, which the woman discovers during her search. While the subjects never meet face to face, their intimate handling of the room’s contents unites them in fleeting moments across time.

Part of the brilliance of this piece is that the gaps and fissures occurring within the film’s narrative are just as important as the film’s immediate content. Sworn’s use of fractured realities and ambiguous characters shifts the viewer’s attention towards unconventional modes of storytelling. The result is an unusual, drifting narrative about a collection of objects and a series of possible histories.

Sworn’s fascination with the social value of objects is also evident in the audio recordings interjected throughout the installation between two scenes of the film. Spanning several minutes each, the tracks feature the disembodied voice of the artist who recites short stories about encounters revolving around material possessions.

In addition to recorded dialogue, Sworn’s installation features a distorted, granular beat and a collection of coloured lights that are timed to activate at various points of the soundtrack. By anchoring the voice of the speaking subject within the body of the installation for The Rag Papers, Sworn initiates an open-ended dialogue with the audience that will inevitably result in the creation of new memories, new histories and new possible realities.

Though The Rag Papers will not be shown in Venice, as Sworn is in the process of creating a new work for the biennale, it certainly bodes well for what’s to come in June.