Exhibition

I Presume You Pictured it Differently

“The science fiction writer is supposed to take a trend or phenomenon of the here-and-now, purify and intensify it for dramatic effect, and extend it into the future. If this goes on, this is what will happen. A prediction is made… If you like you can read it, and a lot of other science fiction, as a thought-experiment. […]The purpose of the thought-experiment, as the term was used by Schrodinger and other physicists, is not to predict the future […] but to describe reality, the present world.” Introduction to The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) Ursula K. LeGuin

Sense of Reality

The artist researches acts of dredging (bringing something deeply deposited towards a surface) previsualization (creating a visual plan in order to arrange a structure for the future) and floaters (things that appear unexpectedly).

Rayner utilizes labour intensive, hand-drawn stop motion animations consisting of up to 900 drawings, utilising the methodology of animation to allow the construction of fictional narratives in an attempt to approximate a sense of reality. The works move tonally towards soft-core science fiction, in pursuit of a state of weirdness: a disconnection of understanding coupled with stabilizing scenarios – gut bacteria is figured as a form of mind control, the artist attempts to visually preview scenarios in order to do the future-self a ‘solid’ by predicting obstacles and self-fulfilling cycles. Through the work, the artist attempts to look through an un-reality to something that is close to the experience of anxiousness about the future.

Experimental Forms of Animation

Animation has been a key focus in Rayner’s practice for the last two years but was not formally introduced to her exhibition-making until late 2018. This interest was began due to the lack of critical or academic attention it receives in its experimental forms (meaning animation produced independently, usually by a single artist and not intended or produced for/with commercial or cinemagraphic intent.)

Collette Rayner

Collette Rayner (Born Dundee, Scotland 1990) is an artist and writer based in Rotterdam and Dundee. She makes drawings, films, installations, experimental animation and texts about how, on what grounds and by which means to establish a critical relationship to phenomena. Collette Rayner graduated with merit from Piet Zwart Institute in 2018.

Links:

Website – Collette Rayner