Rachel Lowe : Revolving Woman

12 Jan-9 Mar 2013

Overview

In a shopping mall in Brazil, a figure turns behind a plate glass window. The relentless motion of this idealised woman is captured on analogue video and inter-cut with a succession of bright, colourful frames and graphic, geometric shapes. The flow of the recorded rotation is disrupted but never actually broken. The interruptions come too fast to register, and flicker like after-images or half-remembered symbols. Presented as a large-scale projection, Rachel Lowe's "Revolving Woman" becomes a physical experience. Flipping constantly between the hyper-real and the unreal, the illusionistic seduction of the moving image is perpetually thwarted. Immersed in the ambient sound, the continual pulse of the video offers no resolution. Instead, with an increasing sense of claustrophobia, the rhythmic shifts seem to mirror a growing instability inherent in our perception of the world.