Through paper and digital collage, this solo exhibition Sliding shut, to the middle explores ideas of digital materiality, time, appropriation, gender and memory. The installation comprises of a single A4 collage and a video piece looping on a wall mounted monitor.
Erosion is present throughout the installation: of time, material and function. Pixelation as well as ‘glitches’ are embraced within Pikó’s practice and are explored as painterly gestures.
Found footage and imagery interacts with collective memory through which she investigates and deconstructs narrative expectations. Fragmentary female protagonists appear throughout these works – recontextualised figures questioning traditional female archetypes within Western filmmaking.
The viewer is invited to become a detective, investigating these fragmentary elements seeking truth or meaning, within each singular work and the installation as a whole. Layers of paper and texture, of black and white footage with colour footage, subtitles from an unheard conversation, digital landscapes and real-world photography merge creating a suggested narrative as well as evoking and alluding to psychological states.
Image: Genevieve Piko ‘In words, on paper and marble before that’ 2018