Project Overview Louis Ghost Chair continues a line of subtle and engaging moving-image works by Simon Martin that meditate on particular moments and directions in art and/or design history. At the heart of many of these oblique, discursive reflections is a specific, iconic object – an item of furniture, a sculpture, or a museum piece from a particular canon or collection. The classic design of the Louis XV armchair, and its enduring cachet and significance, is the starting point of this short film, which goes on to consider the object’s contemporary afterlife in the form of Philippe Starck’s tribute/update Louis Ghost Chair. From antique period-piece to modern-day style accessory, the chair’s transition from wood to plastic, from artisan workshop to high-tech assembly line, traces an arc of reproduction and dematerialisation that is illuminated in a voiceover commentary that itself replicates some of the features of 'classic’ TV documentary. The voiceover’s line of enquiry is expanded by the introduction of other objects (both consumerist and art-historical) which gesture to the tradition of the multiple and the ready-made, and highlight the intricate complexities of perception and representation.

While its language (and frame-of-reference) is disarmingly wide-ranging, the visual style of the work is deliberately much more steadily paced. Paraded before the lingering, almost forensic eye of the camera, these miscellaneous items are methodically observed and examined, as if in a condition check for a museum collection, or quality control in a factory. Exhibitions 21 January - 15 April 2012 The Holburne Museum, Bath 9 June - 22 July 2012 1 February - 3 May 2013 Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, Sunderland Commissioned by FVU and the Holburne Museum, Bath, in association with Collective, Edinburgh, Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, Sunderland and Elena Hill.  Supported by Arts Council England with additional support from Henry Moore Foundation.Simon Martin’s artistic practice deftly illuminates the unsung histories of familiar objects, the unspoken dynamics of artistic canons and institutional spaces, and the unseen connections between the disparate products of different eras, or indeed our own.

These longstanding preoccupations have resulted in a correspondingly crafted and eclectic body of work which encompasses various forms, and which is punctuated by regular and significant film pieces, including the trilogy Carlton (2006), Louis Ghost Chair (2012) and Ur Feeling (2014). Featuring essays by critics Dan Fox and Melissa Gronlund, and art historian Neil Mulholland, the publication focuses on these film works, while ranging across the wider backdrop of Martin’s ideas and concerns. glider chairs for breastfeedingDesigned by Fraser Muggeridge Studio, the book is a desirable object in its own right, as well as an indispensible primer to this compelling and intriguing artist’s work.chair saver kit office depot Edited by Steven Bode and Elena Hill, and with thanks to Patrick Langley.chairs for sale davao city

Published by Film and Video Umbrella and Elena Hill. Copyright 2015 Film and Video Umbrella, Elena Hill, the artists and the authors. Signed copies available on request. We are able to arrange for international delivery, so if you would like to order a publication from outside of the UK please email bookshop@fvu.co.ukExhibition10 April - 21 June 2015rocking chairs for sale adelaide British artist Simon Martin (b.1965) presents UR Feeling – a new film and a poster. dining table and chairs for sale toowoombaIn his previous work, Martin has focused on isolated objects such as the Louis Ghost Chair designed by Philippe Starck, a Donald Judd sculpture and a room divider by post-modern design group Memphis, to examine how we look at things and their representations. white rocking chair glasgow

In this film, he collaborates with performers for the first time, to consider how people feel in response to the inherent architectural codes of the built environment and how the social history of a place can produce particular affects. Moving away from an explanatory or analytical mode of address, this film is wordless and does not set out to convey meaning through representation, but to illuminate experience through the senses. Placing emphasis on mood and embodiment, an immersive soundscape includes field recordings from the Wapping Old Stair on the River Thames and samples of a reconstructed Lyre – thought to be the oldest stringed instrument, excavated from the ancient site of the Mesopotamian city Ur. The performers respond to a number of scenarios which were proposed as image-based exercises, visual ‘clues’, forming the basis of a choreography. These images are derived from ideas about the body in relationship to situation, apprehension of context, buildings or objects.

They are named: Site 01, Site 02, River, Portrait, and Corner. Working with artist and Butoh-trained dancer Nissa Nishikawa and Martin Tomlinson, these commands are actualised in improvisatory performances in which their bodies are moved by images in the mind’s eye, taking their cue from imagined environments and the reciprocal landscapes of affects and sensations they evoke. In 2012 Simon Martin had a solo show at Camden Arts Centre that was also called UR Feeling. In it he brought together objects and images by artists and designers including Ettore Sottsass, Richard Artschwager and Stephen Shore. That exhibition might be seen as a ‘preview’ or speculative exploration of ideas from which this new film has emerged. UR Feeling takes its direction from a quote by architect Peter Eisenman in conversation with Charles Jencks. In it he outlines a situation in which a human subject might feel something unfamiliar or uncanny. A site such as Paternoster Square (the area surrounding St. Paul’s Cathedral), has been continuously occupied for centuries yet in spite of perpetual cycles of demolition and redevelopment it still retains the narrow passageways of a medieval city plan and somehow evokes the feeling of a medieval situation in the present day.

UR Feeling emerges from this ambiguous state between knowing and sensing, drawing attention from the mind to the body as it experiences the persuasions of its situation. 'They will feel in the alleyways something, but it’s not quite medieval and it’s not quite modern. In other words, my whole idea of affect is that you experience something, you feel something, you see something, but you can’t quite explain it. It has an Ur-dimension to it… something between understanding and not, let’s say.’  Simon Martin (b.1965) lives and works in London. His solo exhibitions include Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, Sunderland (2013); Camden Arts Centre, London (2012); Bass Museum of Art, Miami; and Lightbox, Tate Britain, London (all 2008). Recent group exhibitions include The Parliament of Things, First Site, Colchester (2015); The Event Sculpture, Henry Moore Institute, Leeds (2014-15); Glasgow International, Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow (2014); The Imaginary Museum, (with Ed Atkins), Kunstverein Munich;