nca | nichido contemporary art

Georgina Starr
"THEDA"

Fri. 6th April - Sat. 26th May 2007
Reception; 6th April 18:00 - 20:00

nca | nichido contemporary art is pleased to present UK artist, Georgina Starrﾕs first solo exhibition in Tokyo, Japan. The show will present a major new video work "THEDA" and 30 photographic works.

The recipient of a London Artistsﾕ Film and Video Award (LAFVA), Theda explores the passion and drama of early screen performance.

A chance meeting with an eccentric octogenarian film fan introduced Starr to the world of silent screen legend Theda Bara. In 1918 the actress Theda Bara was one of the top 3 ranked film stars in the world. Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford were No 1 and 2.
Bara appeared in over forty films, of which only two still exist today. Through extensive research into the art of Bara and other neglected silent stars, Starr has reconstructed key scenes from the lost films with herself taking on the role of ﾔThedaﾕ.

Experimenting with performance styles and narrative techniques Starr considers the movie screen as a mirror and how we use film fiction to explore and escape our own identity.

As well as the art of Theda Bara, Starr draws from many of the masters of the silent era; from the great early film-makers Louis Feuillade and Carl Th. Dreyer, to the German expressionist theatre of Max Reinhardt, and the theories and pre-1900 acting techniques of Francois Delsarte. She also looks to the lost or neglected talent of other actresses such as Alla Nazimova, Barbara La Marr, Marguerite Clark, Musidora, Maud Allen and many more.

Georgina Starr has been making large-scale video and film installations for the past 12 years. Her subjects are extraordinarily varied and her diverse body of work has incorporated video, film, animation, photography, music, writing and performance. Some of the key themes of Starr's work - from Hypnodreamdruff (1996) a 6 screen multimedia work about the intertwining lives of a group of lonely eccentric characters, to Big V (2004) a four screen piece about teenage sexuality and Catholicism - explore the relationship between history and memory; attempting to extract meaning from collapsing realities, she makes complex and obsessive investigations into invisible, lost or fragile phenomena.
Her works have been exhibited at Museum of Modern Art, New York; Venice Biennale; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and Kunsthalle Wien. Solo exhibitions include Tate Britain, London; Ikon Gallery, Birmingham; Kunsthalle Zurich; Rooseum Centre for Contemporary Art, Malmo and the Stedelijk Museum Bureau, Amsterdam.

Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 11:00am to 19:00pm
For further information, please contact the gallery at +81 (0)3 3555 2140