2015
Heatscapes
The Gallery, Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle, UK
10 September - 4 October
Filmed entirely using thermal imaging cameras at last year’s Great North Run, Heatscapes is a series of short films that trace the race participants' journeys across the cityscape. The cameras make visible the glowing heat generated by the runners' bodies during their training, warm up and the race itself, and reveal the temporary heat prints transferred from the runners onto the urban fabric as they move through the city.
Heatscapes will premiere at The Gallery, Tyneside Cinema - the artist has concieved a multi-screen installation specifically for the space. Heatscapes is a Great North Run Culture Moving Image Commission.
Heatscapes, video (still), 2015
2013
Antipodes
Cube Gallery, Phoenix, Leicester, UK
18 October - 21 December 2013
This second gallery staging of the online artwork Antipodes features a new series of time-lapse videos created from the continuous flow of images so far captured by the project website. Also included is an installation of webcams streaming live images from opposite ends of the globe and new drawings depicting antipodal geographies.
Antipodes launched on the Northward Equinox 2013 and will run for a period of one year: www.antipodes.uk.com
Related information:
Film & Video Umbrella press release
Layla Curtis
Spacex, Exeter, UK
18 May - 13 July 2013
British artist Layla Curtis presents a solo exhibition including a new online and photographic work Antipodes (2013) and her immersive video and sound installation Tong Tana (2012).
Antipodes pairs webcam images from places on opposite sides of the globe. As far away from each other as it is possible to be, these distant ‘twins’ have obvious day/night, summer/winter contrasts but also surprising affinities. Antipodes will run for a period of a year, launching on spring equinox 2013. www.antipodes.uk.com
Antipodes is commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella, in association with Spacex. Supported by Arts Council England.
2008
Traceurs:
to trace, to draw, to go fast
Chelsea Futurespace, London, UK
4 June - 21 September 2008
Traceurs: to trace, to draw, to go fast is a collection of twenty black and white films, created using a thermal imaging camera, which capture a series of moments in which traceurs (practitioners of parkour) come into physical contact with the urban fabric. The camera, which sees the world in terms of temperature rather than light, makes visible the glowing white heat residue transferred from hands, fingers and feet onto the surfaces that the traceurs nimbly leap onto, run across and spring off.
Related publication: Traceurs: to trace, to draw, to go fast, Essay by Richard Grayson
Related review: Martin Coomer, Traceurs: to trace, to draw, to go fast, Time Out
Layla Curtis
Ormeau Baths, Belfast, UK
14th March - 3rd May 2008
Featuring video work and drawings made during her Arts Council England International Fellowship to Antarctica with the British Antarctic Survey in 2005 and collages from the States of Mind series.
2006
Layla Curtis
New Art Gallery Walsall, Walsall, UK
21 July - 10 October 2006
Co-curated by VIVID & New Art Gallery Walsall
This exhibition includes work produced as a result Layla Curtis's journey to Antarctica with the British Antarctic Survey in 2005 along with a new video installation Sky Drawings (Night, Day), commissioned by VIVID, which focuses on vapour trails made by aeroplanes in the sky above the West Midlands.
Related publication: Layla Curtis, published by New Art Gallery Walsall and Locus+
Related essay: A Congregation of Vapours by David Barrett published by ViVID
Polar Wandering
Gimpel Fils, London, UK
9 May - 10 June 2006
Leaving London on Thursday October 27th 2005 Layla Curtis spent 3 months carrying out an extensive geographical exploration with the British Antarctic Survey as part of their Artists and Writers residence programme. Gimpel Fils is pleased to exhibit artworks resulting from her 27,856 mile journey.
Signy Island, limited edition screen print, 2006
2004
States of Mind
Rhodes + Mann, London UK
2 July - 7 August 2004
USA place names such as Wet Beaver Wilderness, Hard Cash and Gun Barrel City inspire a new series of collaged maps and related wall drawing Index, while the installation Souvenirs from Manchester traces USA namesakes.
Related reviews:
Robert Hanks, Pore Over the Map of the Human Heart, The Independent on Sunday (ABC Magazine)
Jessica Lack, Preview: Exhibition, The Guardian (Guide)
Message in a Bottle
from Ramsgate
to the Chatham Islands
Droit House, Margate, UK
27 May - 4 July 2004
A live drawing, updated automatically every 15 minutes, tracks the journey taken by a fleet of bottles released into the sea near Ramsgate and destined for the Chatham Islands.
Project website: www.fromramsgatetothechathamislands.co.uk
Related essay: Message in a Bottle from Ramsgate to the Chatham Islands by Jeremy Millar
Commissioned by Turner Contemporary
2000
Layla Curtis
Milton Keynes Gallery, UK
2 September - 8 October 2000
For her first solo exhibition in a UK public gallery Curtis is showing new works based on maps. The new works make use of sea, road and various world topographical maps, collaged into intriguing hybrid pieces. Some of them are specifically influenced by the grid format of Milton Keynes, one of them turning MK into a rectangular island surrounded by sea. Another new work is a framed text piece, Index (Everywhere I've Ever Been), presented like a hoax index to an atlas, incorporating only places Curtis has been to in her lifetime.
Related review: Paul Usherwood, Alison Turnbull, Layla Curtis, Richard Wright, Art Monthly
Up North
Projection Window, Site Gallery, Sheffield, UK
15 - 22 April 2000
Layla Curtis was commissioned by Site Gallery to make a new work for their Projection Window.
1999
Mapping
AIAV, Akiyoshidai, Japan
9 - 10 January 1999
Layla Curtis will show new work made during her residency at Akiyoshidai international Art village
