Friday, February 09, 2001, 12:00 a.m. Pacific
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Visual
Arts
Is any place really private anymore? Artists
ponder
By Pam Sitt
Seattle
Times staff reporter
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What about privacy?
"That's a question society has to ask continually," said Seattle artist Paul Davies. "People should always be asking about the boundaries between public and private life."
So in an age of the Internet, video technology and "Temptation Island," is anything private anymore?
That's what they want to know. Six artists at SOIL Artist Cooperative have put together "The Privacy Show," a multimedia exhibit exploring that question. The show opened Feb. 3 and runs through Feb. 25.
"We were trying to come up with a theme that would be somewhat relevant - contemporary, I guess," said Samantha Scherer, who is credited with the idea. "I think about the way data gets spread around, and there's not a whole lot that's private anymore. You're walking down the street and you're on camera."
Davies tackles the seemingly ubiquitous presence of cameras with his installation, "Some Areas Under Video Surveillance."
"These people put cameras on and they're walking around the gallery," he explained. "It sort of makes you think, 'Oh, how often is a camera really pointing at me?' ''
Other pieces include a collection of photographs taken of motorists stopped at traffic lights, a projection of an artist's home movies, and a series of drawings of tabloid magazine covers. The artists involved in the show are Davies, Scherer, Tyler Cufley, Jeffrey DeGolier, Rachel Johnston and Claude Zervas.
"It's a very multimedia show. The six of us all came up with very different media," said Scherer, who used a ballpoint pen to re-create tabloid photographs under plastic transparencies stamped with headlines. "It's sort of a sign of the times to show all those things together."
The six artists joined SOIL at around the same time and wanted to do a show together to introduce their work, Scherer said.
"There's the sense of, I don't want to say humor - even though that's definitely present - but there's an element of fun (in the show)," she said. "The work doesn't take itself too seriously."
