InSite Arts - Artists - Blackout Arts

Blackout Arts

Rod Maclachlan works primarily will illumination and projection. He creates playful alchemy that explores the complementary rhythms between imagination and observation, the subtle and the physical; the ethereal and the mundane. He studied sculpture at Chelsea and Glasgow Art Schools and MA- Fine Art at University College Falmouth. Since arriving in Bristol in 1999 Rod has been involved in the city’s thriving experimental video and film culture, and has worked on a number of video and light installations, VJ activities, and the production design for arts events and music festivals. He recently collaborated with Jem Noble on an audio-visual installation at the Tate Britain as part of the AV social event held there in April 2008. Rod is one of three partners comprising Blackout Arts, the art collective established in 2002 which evolved from Bristol’s inspirational art enclave The Cube Cinema and which focuses on creating audio, visual and mixed-mode art works.

Jem Noble’s work brings together elements of intimacy and spectacle, aiming to produce encounters with immediate impact that give way to multi-layered readings. Using sound and moving-image media to produce installations and performances in response to site/situation, Noble is often concerned with the subversion of familiar objects, processes and experiences to produce a sense of the uncanny, drawing out hidden complexities in relationships often taken for granted. Recent works include Liberations (Spike Island, May 2008) – a solo exhibition of large-scale sculptural video projections with synchronous audio; Underlap (Tate Britain, April 2008) – a responsive sound-design for Maclachlan’s video work; Dischord & Dynne (Spike Island, November 2007) – a six-point surround story telling in conjunction with Can Altay’s exhibition EY AHALI!; and I Dream A Tower (Tollgate House, Bristol, 2006) – super-scale architectural video/radio installation as part of the Blackout Arts public-art commission, intimate~INTIMATE. This work informs and echoes Noble’s parallel media practice which draws together sound design, music production and video editing.

The third member of Blackout Arts is Chiz Williams. No 7, number 9, twenty-one, page 2066. Numbers change as does the liquid in our bodies. This former actor, ghostwriter, and international ice-cream sales person, re-values his relationship with the arts at every lucky numerical point. Currently he is developing camera stock, exploring the aesthetics of Piracy, revisiting a hazy and fantastical idea to make a feature film, coordinating music in tandem with location and staring into the sun as every opportunity. A notorious and sticky collaborator whose best pieces are without notes. Chiz is a deep roller so - high rise tumbles, low rent inferno's, the 'disco' and 'sport' all figure in his output when connected to the emotional. His work within numerous artist groups over the last 25 years has been his main activity and he hopes this lasts another quarter.

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InSite Arts projects

Cabot Circus, Bristol

Artists: Neville Gabie, Nayan Kulkarni, Susanna Heron, Timorous Beasties, Vong Phaophanit & Claire Oboussier, Esther Rolinson, Ralph Hoyte, Claire Morgan, Blackout Arts

At the heart of Cabot Circus is an ambitious and innovative series of site-specific public art works, the result of one of the largest and most diverse public art programmes of its kind in Europe.

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