LONDON, ENGLAND.- The Nunnery Gallery will present The Invention of Solitude from September 21 through October 22, 2006. The Invention of Solitude combines a collaborative system of curation with the work of four artists', Rebecca Birch, Matthew Lutz-Kinoy, Alex Hudson and Rob Smith, who each explore their physical surroundings and in doing so reconstruct our perceptions of the contemporary landscape.

Recasting identity through their interaction with the landscape, be it physical, fictional or anthropological, the artists develop an idiosyncratic relationship to the landscape that draws on the social order of the natural world. Showing individual works the artists also join together to collaborate directly with the curator.

Four park benches face outwards from the centre of the gallery. In front of each a solitary slide is projected that mediates and reproduces the work of each artist within a single uniform format. The projections provide a preview to the work that unfolds through the remainder of the exhibition as works by each artist are encountered.

The title of the exhibition appropriates the book of the same title by American author Paul Auster. Drawing reference to it, and using it as a biographical platform, the exhibition sets the singular identity of the artist against the collective one as generated through the situation of a group exhibition. An exhibition curated by Charles Danby

The Artists: Rebecca Birch, Matthew Lutz-Kinoy, Rob Smith, and Alex Hudson:

Rebecca Birch presents for the first time her new video work, Background Noise (2006). Constructed from a series of twenty one separate videos Birchճ work charts the movements of animals within their natural habitat caught both by the frame of the camera and trapped with the physical constraint of the TV monitor. Compiled over two years, multiple, stacked TV monitors create an extensive virtual landscape in which the movements of animals are mimicked and sublimated by those of other animals on other screens. Exploring the anthropological, synthetic and digitised, Birchճ work both re-affirms and refutes conventions of the landscape, liberally recasting natural orders leaving ants and lizards as likely to climb and forage on screens high above the ground as to crawl on screens close to the floor. Rebecca Birch has recently shown at Node, London (2006) and East International (2006), she will graduate from the Slade School of Fine Art (MA) in 2007.

Matthew Lutz-Kinoy presents a series of new and recent video works (2004-2006) alongside a selection of the objects / props that appear in them. Cast as the subject of his work, isolated and constrained by the camera lens, the artist repeatedly attempts to evade the constructed environment that ultimately is of his own making. Punctuated with offbeat sound and colour, Matthewճ manipulation of low-fi technologies, bound by fashion, magazines and music, is extensive and inventive. Tapping into culture through drawing, video and performance Matthew maps out a lucid and fantastical landscape that remains anything but vivid. Matthew will graduate from Cooper Union, New York in 2007. He is currently living and working in Berlin. He showed at the Berlin Biennale and is represented by Yukiko Kawase Gallery, Paris. This is the first time Matthewճ work has been shown in the UK.

Alex Hudson presents a series of new paintings and drawings. Mixing hallucinogenic hues Alex engages directly with the expansive landscape of the outdoors. Distorting the Գupposedՠsocial orders both of the urban environment and of the countryside, Alexճ paintings inhabit an occasional wilderness where boundaries are blurred and the possibility for nefarious acts to occur is increased. Painting landscapes that owe as much to ruin as to romance, often veiled beneath natureճ canopy and located beyond the lens of the closed circuit television camera, Alexճ works are disrupted by objects left or lost, chanced-upon and found, and figures dislocated and outcast. His refined mark making combines technical rigor with loose strokes to produce provocative and engaging works. Alex Hudson graduated from Kingston University in 2000, and has exhibited at venues including Artsway and the Study Gallery. He will be undertaking an MA in painting at Wimbledon in 2006-7, and is a founder member of the artist led group Fridge.

Rob Smith presents a new audio controlled video installation, Wind Sound Apparatus 2006. Taking natural phenomenon (such as the wind) and naturally occurring processes (such as the erosion of stone by water) Rob produces circular and looped works that expose and re-render the natural environment. Wind Whistle 2006 draws on the mechanism of a kite transforming the vibrations that travel through its chord into a robust and abstract soundtrack. This audio is transposed back into the work and is used to generate the frame-rate of the video, inversely questioning the connection of performance and site to the technology of new media artwork. The stop frame image of the kite lurching erratically in the sky evokes a menacing-sense akin to that found in Hitchcockճ film The Birds. Projected across wall and ceiling, the work is drawn skyward enticing an obtuse sense of vacuous landscape. Rob Smith graduated from the Royal Academy Schools in 2002. He has shown with Keith Talent and has been represented at Zoo Art Fair. He recently exhibited at the Royal Academy Schools Gallery with Cornelia Parker, and will be showing extensively through 2007-8.

The curator Charles Danby gained an MA from the Slade in 2002 and jointly curated the exhibition Trackers at the PM Gallery & House, London, in 2004. He writes for publications including Untitled, I-D Magazine and Miser&Now, and lives and works in London.