A Year With No Head centres on a large-scale drawing by Blightman depicting a view of a window almost completely obscured by a curtain. A small opening reveals a delicately rendered plant pot. Blightman’s drawings are often of remembered images from previous installations as well as of the private spaces in which she lives and works. Hung on the wall and lit by a reading lamp on a table, the drawing’s scale and illumination, as well as the way in which a carefully positioned bench encourages viewers to sit and watch the image, engages visitors in a proto-filmic mode of viewing that imparts a uncertain temporality to the image. This sense of passing time is further emphasized by the gallery being lit only by natural light, the shifts and changes of which alter the atmosphere of the gallery throughout the day. A record player connected to a motion sensor plays the Blue Orchids’ song A Year With No Head as visitors enter the space, providing a notional soundtrack to this cinematic arrangement. Like her series of three-minute 16mm films made since 2007, which are shot at 3pm in various domestic interiors, Blightman’s spare choreography of sound and object draws our attention to every seemingly incidental detail of the spaces her work inhabits.

A Year With No Head is accompanied by a new printed publication containing various texts written and compiled by the artist over a period of several years. Functioning as part of the installation, the writing moves between stream-of-consciousness observations and more personal reminiscences, often subtly making reference to past works and installations.

Juliette Blightman (b. 1980) lives and works in Farnham and Berlin. Recent solo exhibitions include the day grew dark, Künstlerhaus, Stuttgart; an hour, Michael Benevento, Los Angeles (both 2010); Tomorrow then, Hotel, London (2009); so much better than last year, Galerie Giti Nourbakhsch, Berlin; Nought to Sixty, ICA, London (2008). Recent group exhibitions include one fine morning in may…, GAK, Bremen (2010); and Silberkuppe, Staatlichen Kunsthalle, Baden Baden (2009).

To purchase the publication or the limited edition etching Blightman produced to accompany the exhibition please visit our editions page here

This exhibition was kindly supported by The Elephant Trust