Idea Generation

Katie Paterson contemplates the ecosystem in a new commission for Vauxhall Motors

21st December 2009 – 30th January 2010
Deal Pier, Kent

Katie Paterson’s evocative new artwork, Streetlight Storm, transforms Deal pier into a monitoring system for global storm patterns

Scottish artist Katie Paterson, one of the most exciting and closely watched artists of the moment, has been commissioned by Vauxhall Motors to create an art work on the theme of re-inventing British classics. Paterson has taken a British seaside town as her inspiration, and will create a work for Deal Pier. Along the length of the pier, out to sea, the lights will flicker in time with lightning storms as they occur live across the globe.

Starting on the winter equinox, the shortest day of the year on the 21st December, Streetlight Storm will take place throughout the darkest months of the British winter, silently conveying the weather patterns of a whole planet. In this contemplative and evocative place, the gentle flickering of the lights will unfold between dusk, darkness and dawn, reflecting on the water through the night, contrasting with the drama of the lightning strikes that spark through.

Pairing the commonplace with the sublime is a recurring theme in Paterson’s work. Viewers can gaze out to the horizon from the pier as these everyday streetlights connect the imagination with faraway places and the Earth’s ecosystem at large. A simple concept, yet expansive in scope, the work will connect people with diverse geographies, collapsing distances and timescales, the artificial and the natural.

Central to Paterson’s practice is collaboration and this commission is no exception as the artist works with technologists, engineers, meteorologists and lightning scientists within the UK and internationally. Ambitious in scale, Streetlight Storm will fuel new cutting-edge partnerships and innovation and reflect Vauxhall’s use of advanced technologies and ethos of excellence in design and engineering. The theme of re-inventing British classics chimes with Vauxhall’s own work re-inventing the car as we know it in the form of the Ampera, its first electric car.

Katie Paterson commented, “I am interested in the way the ordinary and the otherworldly intersect, and much of my work uses everyday technologies from doorbells to record players and connecting with vast and intangible phenomena such as dying stars and the moon). I hope the work’s universal content will ignite the imagination of many.”

Katie Paterson is a member of the Vauxhall Collective 2009 www.vauxhallcollective.co.uk Streetlight Storm is supported by Vauxhall Motors and Albion Gallery, in partnership with Turner Contemporary and Whitstable Biennale and runs from 21st December – 30 January 2010.

Katie Paterson
Katie Paterson’s artistic practice is multi-disciplinary, cross-medium, and conceptually driven, often exploring landscape by means of technology, and connectivity by way of moonlight, melting glaciers, and dead stars. Recent works include Earth–Moon–Earth (Moonlight Sonata Reflected from the Surface of the Moon), which involved the transmission of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata to the moon and back; Vatnajökull (the sound of), a live phone line to an Icelandic glacier; and All the Dead Stars, a large map documenting the locations of the 27,000 dead starts known to humanity.

Paterson graduated from the Slade School of Fine Art in 2007, where her final exhibition gained much attention and recognition among art critics, academics and the media, and was restaged a year later at Modern Art Oxford, where she was the youngest artist to be granted a solo-show. She has recently exhibited at Altermodern: Tate Triennial 2009, Tate Britain, Universal Code, Powerplant, Toronto, and Lifeforms, Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm. Upcoming shows include PERFORMA 09, New York.

Katie would like to thank Vauxhall Motors, Albion Gallery, Turner Contemporary and Whitstable Biennale for supporting the commission, along with Martin John Callanan, Kent County Council, Dover District Council, Future Creative, Ken Doyle, Martin Fullekrug and Dieter Lang.

Vauxhall Collective
The Vauxhall Collective is one of the most ambitious commercially-funded creative support schemes in the UK.

Members of the Vauxhall Collective are supported financially to carry out projects, consequently raising their profile in the industry and in the media, and giving them the resources to fulfil their creative potential.

In previous years Vauxhall successfully ran the VX Collective based on collaboration between members. Previous members have included Giles Deacon, Christopher Kane, Jonathan Kelsey, Simon Hasan, Ben Rivers, Gayle Chong Kwan, Matthew Darbyshire and Gideon Reeling.

With an ongoing commitment to championing style and design in the UK, British car marque Vauxhall is a keen supporter of creativity through additional initiatives such as the Vauxhall Art Car Boot Fair 2009 and the Vauxhall Fashion Scout.

Latest models include Insignia, the 2009 European Car of the Year and New Astra, a car that shares the same design language as Insignia and that will be built in Ellesmere Port, Liverpool.

Vauxhall is reinventing the car as we know it with Ampera. Vauxhall’s first electric car. The wheels are turned electronically at all times and all speeds and can be plugged into any household 240v outlet for charging.

Contacts
For further information / Use of pictures / Interviews
Idea Generation: +44(0)20 7749 6850
Ellen Harrison: ellen@ideageneration.co.uk
Marta Bogna: marta@ideageneration.co.uk
Vauxhall Collective website
Vauxhall website
Katie Paterson website