THE HAGUE.- British artist Helen Dowling (b. 1982) uses a multitude of images that she has found, downloaded or filmed herself to create video works that have a hallucinatory effect, taking the viewer on a visual trip that presents them with an alienating view of existence. At the same time, the works reference philosophy and poetry – from poet Kate Tempest to feminist thinker Hélène Cixous – and universal themes like the landscape and humankind’s impact on nature. Stranger on Display at GEM, museum of contemporary art, is Dowling’s first museum solo exhibition, which brings together several films and sculptures to create a site specific installation.

From celestial bodies to wandering humans, images appear in apparently random succession, forming stories with no linear plot. Dowling combines her own footage with existing material, including digitalised images from magazines and stock videos. In the editing process, she creates an interplay of colour, movement, rhythm and sound, as an associative visual narrative with several layers of meaning emerges.

Dowling will be showing new and existing work in an installation filling up GEM’s entire space. In this universe, the boundary between real and artificial is blurred. Some elements are recognisable: a piece of land or a starry sky, a young woman, a car window. Without entirely abandoning figuration, Dowling approaches abstraction in an almost painterly fashion. With their penetrating soundscapes the works are an immersive experience.

I Am Not the Sky and Holden
Dowling’s 2007 films I Am Not the Sky and Holden were shot in Australia, dubbed ‘no man’s land’ (Terra Nullius) by the Europeans who conquered it in the eighteenth century. The complex idea of an empty land prompted Dowling to explore the landscape from various perspectives.

I Am Not the Sky appears to be an atmospheric travelogue focusing on the Australian outback and the camels, once introduced by humans, that still live there. The view is however repeatedly obstructed by a pulsating sphere hovering in the centre of the image. In Holden Dowling turns the camera on the world in miniature: the interior of a Holden – a make of car sold only in Australia – exploring the dashboard, the upholstery, the raindrops on the window from very close quarters. While to many a car symbolises freedom, Dowling portrays it as an intimate setting closed off from the outside world.

The Queen of Lemons and Sarah, Sarah
A line from Kate Tempest’s Brand New Ancients is the thread running through The Queen of Lemons (2018). In a stream of images Dowling links female figures from ancient Egypt with contemporary stock images in which women generally play a passive role. Dowling expands on this theme in her new film Sarah, Sarah (2019), which will be shown for the first time at GEM. By subverting the original relationships between image and meaning, she opens up a new perspective on representations of women in contemporary visual culture.

Helen Dowling
Helen Dowling studied at Goldsmith’s College and The Slade School of Fine Art in London, and was artist in residence at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam in 2010/2011. She lives and works in Brussels.