Chris Hargreaves & Dave Stuart

13 July - 31 July

“The moment you enter you are altered, you are about to have one of the most thrilling experiences of your life; they comment on the various scenes with long captions in sensational tones; they combine historical reconstruction with religious celebration, glorification of movie celebrities, and themes of famous fairytales and adventure stories; they dwell on the horrible, the bloody; their concern with authenticity reaches the point of reconstructive neurosis.”

To travel is to write an untold story; to tell a story is a journey. Throughout all cultures and histories, and in the present, we attempt to preserve our experiences and memories – collective and individual – by means of tales, narratives, accounts, yarns, legends, fairytales, chronicles, anecdotes, novels, reports, songs and sagas. Now, of course, we also have “film” or, more accurately, “moving image”.

“…a boat more than any other tool he uses is a little representation of an archetype. There is an ‘idea’ boat that is an emotion, and because the emotion is so stray it is possible that no other tool is made with such honesty as a boat.

…A man builds the best of himself into a boat – builds many of the unconscious memories of his ancestors.”

The world today consists of more than just the real. Not only can we travel in physical space but now we also have to consider what is referred to in digital media as the ‘virtual’ – the ‘hyperreal’. The stories that this generation pass onto the next can be created in a fantasy land from the comfort and isolation of the computer suite. This utopian “Disney” world can border on the real world so convincingly because of its ideals and seductiveness.

In this sculptural exhibition, Chris Hargreaves and Dave Stewart ask us to question our perception of “moving images” by creating works that blur the line between how and what we perceive to be absolute truth, the line dividing the ‘real’ and the ‘hyper real’.