This autumn, the Serpentine presents Palisades, the first solo show in London by Rachel Rose, American artist and winner of the 2015 Frieze Artist Award. The exhibition will directly respond to the Serpentine Sackler Gallery with a unique site-specific installation. Interweaving two of her most recent videos – A Minute Ago (2014) and Palisades in Palisades (2014) – Rose will create an immersive environment through movement, sound and colour.
A Minute Ago begins with a video of a sudden and apocalyptic-like hailstorm in Siberia, over which Rose layers a sound recording of Pink Floyd’s Echoes playing to an empty amphitheatre in Pompeii. This scene is fused with Rose’s own footage of architect Philip Johnson’s Glass House, incorporating a tour led by the architect himself (rotoscoped in from an old VHS).
In Palisades in Palisades Rose uses a remote control lens and a precise trompe-l’œil editing technique to link a girl standing on the banks of the Hudson River at the Palisades Interstate Park in New York, to different moments in the landscape’s history, including the memory of the site’s involvement in the American Revolutionary War.
Through the juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated events, Rose’s work presents humanity’s shared current anxieties and their multi-layered interconnectivity: our changing relationship to the natural world, the advance of technology, catastrophes, our own mortality and the impact of history.
Rachel Rose: Palisades
1 October – 8 November 2015
Serpentine Sackler Gallery
West Carriage Drive
London W2 2AR