Marvin Gaye Chetwynd: Hermitos Children 2 and Anne Collier: Women With Cameras, Studio Voltaire

Marvin Gaye Chetwynd: Hermitos Children 2

In 2012, when Marvin Gaye Chetwynd was still called Spartacus Chetwynd, she was nominated for the Turner Prize. She was praised for the low-fi, homemade aesthetic of her performances which she exploits to draw on popular forms of social engagement and meaning making. Imagine late 20th century pop culture being acted out as a 13th century street carnival.

In her latest and most significant collaboration with Studio Voltaire Chetwynd will show her most recent film, Hermitos Children 2, in a typically Chetwynd-esque interior (lots of props, anarchic clippings, and masses of ripped paper). Hermitos Children 2 is a follow up to a 2008 film and takes the form of an experimental crime drama featuring detective Joan Shipman as she follows a trail of sex crimes. This is an artist who once created a performance called Jabba the Hutt’s Reading Group, so expect anarchy, comedy, history and papier-mâché. What could be more fun?

Anne Collier: Women With Cameras

In this rare opportunity to see the work of Anne Collier, photographer based in New York, visitors to the show might be forgiven for wondering just when these photographs were taken. Collier’s series Women With Cameras looks like a collection of clippings taken from 1970s magazines. And to an extent that is what they are, except that instead of removing these images with a pair of scissors Collier gets her camera to do the cutting out.

Her practice involves selecting an image and then formally photographing it, turning it into a new image. What has changed? The answer is the ownership of the image. It is a case of power politics. Western art and advertising so often make the woman the subject of the image that they strip her of any claim to the ownership of her appearance. By looking at these women eye to eye, with only their cameras in between, Collier proposes solidarity with them and affords them ownership of the image that they have helped her to create.