LONDON, ENGLAND.-The Photographer's Gallery presents Roy Villevoye - Propeller, on view through September 25, 2005. Since the early 1990s, Roy Villevoye has been making work in the Asmat region of Papua, formerly known as Irian Jaya. The exhibition will include a series of photographs and two moving image works Propeller (2004) and The New Forest(2004), screened on alternate days.

Many of the photographs show Papuans standing upright wearing Western T-Shirts with all their symbolic cross-cultural vicissitudes. Sometimes the tops have large tears in them, which at first seem to indicate poverty, but in fact the t-shirts have usually been consciously �mutilated� to function as ornaments. In The Fifth Man (2003) four Papuans are shown alongside the artist staring out to the camera; several of the group are wearing T-shirts emblazoned with an image of Osama bin Laden. The viewer is left guessing if the Papuans are fully aware of the contemporary resonance of this image.

In one photograph we see a propeller, which is all that remains of a World War II plane that crashed during fighting with the Japanese. The origin of this object is explored in the film work Propeller(2004), with stories told by various speakers, both Papuan and Western. The artist contrasts indigenous storytelling with an almost Victorian linear search for the historical truth.

Various accounts are heard including a highly mythologised version of the events, full of local folklore, told by a local man called Kornelis Emin�. This is contrasted with an account from the sister of an American missionary who had wondered if the mystery surrounding the propeller�s origins was created to cover up an act of cannibalism. In fact, the pilot survived the incident, and Villevoye tracks him down in Texas, USA, where he unsurprisingly has his own version of events to recount.

The second film, The New Forest (2004), made with Jan Dietvorst, contains a number of interwoven monologues and interviews that have no clear progression: from a Papuan who believes his bad health can be attributed to an unfulfilled obligation to an ancestor, to an apparently confused Korean, unsure how to relate to these people and this place. Woven into this are discussions about a recent trip made by several Papuans to Holland, relating how well they were received and how much others are keen to see and experience life beyond their own village. To begin and end we see a clip of Papuans sorting through black bags full of money, revealing the complex ways in which old traditions and new ways of life co-exist.

As Sven L�tticken recently remarked: �Resolutely averse to romanticising the Papuans, Villevoye�s work shatters the illusion of Papua as an untainted innocent Eden. Instead he shows aglobal village full of rumours, myths, and misunderstandings set against the background of aseriously dysfunctional economy.� (1)

(1) Artforum, March 2005, p 249

Camilla Jackson, Senior Curator

This exhibition is a touring show from the Frans Hals Museum in The Netherlands.