The Wilson twins continue to investigate and engage with the evocative meanings embedded within the fabric of buildings. Sometimes these buildings are deserted, as in the Apollo Pavilion, the subject of the Wilson’s new four-monitor installation, and a structure whose current state of decaying, vandalised neglect is poignantly at odds with its optimistic, utopian origins: it was built by Victor Pasmore in the 60s and named after the first moonlanding. This dichotomy becomes even more marked when the Apollo Pavilion is viewed as a counterpoint to Dream Time, an earlier, 35mm film shot in Baikonur, the Russian flagship for space endeavour which records the launch of the first manned space mission to the International Space Station—a venture which now takes on a decidedly different spirit in the wake of the recent Columbia space shuttle disaster (above, “Soyuz TM, Dreamtime, 2001). There is little solace is to be found in the Wilson’s most recent photographs and film footage, taken in the inner sanctum of the Atmel microchip plant, which show our brave new technological future to be eerily pristine, dust-free and bathed in an acrid yellow, rather than a rosy light (until 3 May).
Originally appeared in The Art Newspaper as 'Jane and Louise Wilson'