Oliver Beer, Ikon Gallery 2017
Installation view
Train rail, cut and mirror polished
Live sound installation based on the harmonics of antiques resounding at Wagner's Tristan Chord
Installation view
At the heart of this exhibition is a new work, commissioned by Ikon, Reanimation (I Wan’na be Like You) (2017) which is a ‘re-animation’ of a scene from Walt Disney’s The Jungle Book. 2,500 children, from early years until the age of 13 from Birmingham, were involved, each drawing a single film still put in order of the children’s ages, so that the animation becomes increasingly ‘grown up’. Frame by frame the scribbles of infants progressively give way to the increasingly lucid drawings of children and then adolescents. This work touches on the inexorable passage of time – through a time-based medium – in order to develop our consideration of what it is like to be human.
A catalogue accompanies the exhibition, with essay by Ikon Director Jonathan Watkins and Mami Kataoka Chief Curator at Mori Museum, Tokyo.