Screening: The Needle and the Larynx and Worst Gift
Wednesday, April 18, 2018. Doors open 7 pm.
The White Page
3400 Cedar Ave South
Minneapolis, MN 55407
Book your free place here.
The work of London-based artist Marianna Simnett (b.1986, Kingston-upon-Thames, UK) incorporates video, theatrical performance, choral music and fantastical literary parables to investigate the body and its limits. Simnett often presents the body in a state of transformation or distress and her films elicit strong, visceral responses which are felt as well as seen. In advance of Simnett’s May 2018 arrival in Minneapolis, FD13 residency for the arts and The White Page present a screening of the artists’ most recent moving image works The Needle and the Larynx, 2016 (15 minutes, 27 seconds) and Worst Gift, 2017 (18 minutes).
In both videos, Simnett weaves cautionary tales which oscillate between the visceral genre of body horror and the theatricality and menace of dark children’s fables, such as those collected by the Brothers Grimm. Written in rhyme and song, The Needle and the Larynx places a central, archetypal character, ‘The Girl’, at odds with an authoritarian medical doctor, ‘The Surgeon’, who initially refuses her request to lower her voice but is ultimately forced to accede The Girl’s demand. The story unfolds over slowed footage of the artist having her voice surgically lowered and the narrative is playfully relayed in the artists’ (The Girl’s) newly descended tones.
Worst Gift continues Simnett’s exploration of female subjectivity and bodily integrity as they relate to the power dynamics of the medical profession. It is set in an alternate world in which a voice surgeon (played by real-life surgeon and choral singer Dr. Declan Costello) injects prepubescent boys with a substance to lower their voices. Shot in a Botox factory and theatrical surgery, the film follows a female protagonist (played by the artist) as she ventures on a mission to obtain the substance refused to her by the surgeon.
About the artist:
Marianna Simnett (b. 1986) lives and works in London. Trained in classical music and theatre from a young age, its influence on her work endured as she turned to film, installation, and performance during her BA at Nottingham Trent University in 2007 and her MA at the Slade School of Art in 2013. Simnett’s work has been the subject of several solo exhibitions including a current exhibition at the Zabludowicz Collection (London, UK); Wing-sleepers (Art on the Underground, London, UK) in 2018; Worst Gift, Matt’s Gallery (London, UK) in 2017; Lies, Seventeen Gallery (New York, NY) and Valves Collapse, Seventeen Gallery (London, UK) in 2016; Park Nights, Serpentine Pavilion (London, UK) and Blue Roses, Comar (Isle of Mull, Scotland) in 2015. Simnett was a winner of the Jerwood/FVU Award (2015), the Adrian Carruthers Award (2013) and the William Coldstream Prize (2013). She was shortlisted for the Jarman Award and Paul Hamlyn in 2017.