Frances Stark: Look, read along with me, Hayward Gallery

A witty dissection of online communication and avatars from the Frances Stark, Hayward Gallery Project Space, exhibition.

At a mid-point in her career, Frances Stark has built an international reputation and is represented across the world.  The playful LA-based artist is showing two video installations at the Hayward Gallery's  Project Space within the wider context of the Southbank Centre's Festival of Love – and it's a great introduction for those unfamiliar with her work. Stark has shown in the UK before, notably at the ICA (2008) and in Nottingham (2009), and so it’s appropriate that she has progressed to the Hayward, currently thriving under the directorship of Ralph Rugoff. 

Her work...

Stark is mostly concerned with writing and language – indeed, Stark is often billed as an ‘artist and writer , given the breadth of formats in which her work is published. In the past, she has used carbon paper (remember that?) to trace writing from Samuel Beckett, Emily Dickinson and Henry Miller. But stark also shows an interest a particular interest in contemporary communication and its curious, disembodying effects.

At the Hayward...

 In her work Osservate, leggete con me (2012), a line from Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Stark has transcribed conversations with nine online partners in a video chat facility. Using the opera’s  famous aria as a soundtrack, which lists the seducer’s conquests, Don Giovanni’s fatal promiscuity is turned upside down by Stark’s conversations, often sexual, with nine strangers. 

Her piece My Best Thing (2011) is a feature-length video where two digital avatars converse representing Stark and two strangers in an online chat forum. It’s a piece that illustrates the flashes of enlightenment that one gets in the anonymous medium of online chat. Stark's free-ware avatar characters, complete with cutesy fig-leaves, bring an absurd and uncanny sense to the proceedings. 

As is the case with many of Stark’s works, the title of this show is a direct, personal statement  ‘Look, read along with me…’. But her work is self-referential rather than biographical; leavened by humour and clearing a significant examination of the way we communicate.