Installed at the Old Power Station, Oxford under the auspices of Modern Art Oxford
7th - 29th July, 2012
7000 cm x 5250 cm site - specific projection
Solo exhibition curated by Paul Bonaventura, Senior Research Fellow in Fine Art Studies, University of Oxford, Michael Stanley, Director, Modern Art Oxford and Emily Korchmáros, Curator, Modern Art Oxford.

Further developing Gerrard’s realtime portraits of physical locations, Exercise (Djibouti) 2012 harnesses simulation and motion capture technologies to create a temporal collage in which disciplined athletic bodies perform a perpetual militarised exercise of strategic capability and intent. On a simulation of the barren landscape of Djibouti in the Horn of Africa, two teams of computer-generated figures meet daily at dawn to initiate a series of cryptic gestural routines – precise, repetitive, faintly antagonistic.

Just as the landscape is a painstaking, extremely complex reproduction of an actual space that was generated using photographs and satellite data, the figures in Exercise (Djibouti) 2012 were generated by engaging a group of elite athletes in training for the London 2012, whose actual movements were converted to data with the latest motion-capture technologies.  Neither completely synthetic nor strictly real, the work exists in ‘real time’ (Djibouti: GMT +3 hours), orbiting over a yearly cycle that incorporates the movements of sun, moon and stars.

Production credits
Producer : Werner Poetzelberger
Programmers : Helmut Bressler, Matthias Strohmaier
Actors : Somto Eruchie, Jordan McGrath, Julian Thomas
3D scanning, texture photography / character retopology: Sample & Hold
Motion capture : Audiomotion Studios
3D modelling / animation processing: arx anima
3D modelling / animation processing coordinator: Christoph Staber
Motion capture editing / animation processing: Paul Pammesberger,
Patrick Zeymer, Laszlo Nyikos, Stefan Kubicek, Benedikt Lutz
3D environment modelling / texturing: Martin Hebestreit, Adam Donavan

Other credits
Principal exhibition supporter: Audiomotion Studios
Exhibition sponsor: ArtAV
Exercise (Djibouti) 2012 is commissioned by the Ruskin School of Drawing & Fine Art, Oxford University Sport and Modern Art Oxford and forms part of the London 2012 Festival. Supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England, Culture Ireland, John Fell OUP Fund, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Podium and Magdalen College, Oxford, the project also forms part of RELAY, a region-wide programme of new visual arts commissions and live events across the South East to mark the Olympic year.
 

Photograph courtesy John Gerrard Studio

Credits / Photos
David Fisher

Installed at Southwark Old Town Hall under the auspices of South London Gallery.

Pursuit of Perfection: The Politics of Sport brings together art works which, in different ways and to varying degrees of seriousness or wit, play on some of the issues raised by sport, the politics surrounding it and its representation in the media. Aleksandra Mir’s spectacular installation Triumph, 2009, comprises 2,529 trophies; a sound piece by Janice Kerbel presents a specially scripted baseball commentary; and works by Roderick Buchanan, Lucy Gunning, Jonathan Monk, Ariel Orozco and Paul Pfeiffer take football as their subject. In Southwark Old Town Hall, John Gerrard’s Exercise (Djibouti) 2012 uses digital technologies to explore aspects of sport, spectacle, military exercise and power. In stark contrast, Michel Auder’s low-tech video collage of clips from TV coverage of the 1984 LA Olympics focuses on the human body, eroticised and mechanised in its pursuit of perfection.
http://www.southlondongallery.org

» View installation video: 1  2 » View installation shot: 1  2  3 

7th - 29th July, 2012
7000 cm x 5250 cm site - specific projection
Installed at the Old Power Station, Oxford under the auspices of Modern Art Oxford.

The latest project in Modern Art Oxford’s offsite programme, Exercise (Djibouti) 2012 by John Gerrard was presented as a large-scale cinematic installation in the dramatic setting of a disused powerstation in Oxford.

Originating in found documentary images of US military exercises in Djibouti (Horn of Africa) and informed by the artist’s research into athletic achievement, the work makes unprecedented use of emerging technologies to reflect on the relationship between competitive sport, military training, theatrical performance and dance...

Exhibition curated by Paul Bonaventura, Senior Research Fellow in Fine Art Studies, University of Oxford, Michael Stanley, Director, Modern Art Oxford and Emily Korchmáros, Curator, Modern Art Oxford.

http://www.modernartoxford.org.uk/

» View installation video: 1  2 » View installation shot: 1  2  3  4 

Sarah Mayhew: "A highly-charged cinematic installation in a dramatic setting puts an interesting twist on the current Olympic obsession", Thursday 19th July 2012, Oxford Mail