Juliette Blightman

Fine Arts, Sydney is presenting a new exhibition of work by Juliette Blightman, ‘Nightshift’.

On the evening of the 17th June 2015, six friends had dinner in Berlin. The next day whilst looking for something else, I saw my computer’s search history and discovered I had saved every song we played from the beginning of the evening until 7.30 the following morning. I made a playlist with these songs and also with the moments of nothing - like when we eat dinner for instance and don’t attend to the music - or when it automatically chooses the next song for you, so that everything could be replayed at the exact same time on another occasion.

During the exhibition this playlist will replay every night at the exact time. Due to time zone difference, it will play at the gallery in Sydney through the day.

The day that I am told about universal gravitation, that the Earth spins around the Sun, I understand, faster than I understand how to read a watch or a clock face, that others, humans, animals, are awake on the other side of the Earth while I sleep; that is to say, that one humanity watches over the one that is sleeping, and the sleeping one dreams of the other, awake. The thought of History comes to me then, as a child, the thought of tomorrow, of how night divides yesterday from today: night is rumination on the future. I see, then, History contained, great figures, treaties, celebrations, people communing, battles, in the blue sky, inside the firmament: the lofty dead, all the great thoughts, aligned above: the sky rustles with those actions, and at night, the stars signal each, every, all; Time is there, up above. - Pierre Guyotat, ‘Coma’ (2006)

Juliette Blightman lives and works in Berlin, Germany and Farnham, UK. She was born in Farnham, UK in 1980. She completed an MFA at University of the Arts/Central St Martins, London in 2007, and BFA at Byam Shaw School of Art, London in 2003. Blightman’s work has recently been the subject of the solo exhibitions ‘Extimacy’ at Kunsthalle Bern, Bern, Switzerland (2016) and ‘Portraits and Repetition’ at South London Gallery, London, UK (2016). Her work has been included in the exhibitions ‘Made in Germany Drei’, Kestner Gesellschaft, Hannover, Germany (2017); 'Transparenzen’, Kunstverein Nürnberg - Albrecht Dürer Gesellschaft, Nurenburg and Bielefelder Kunstverein, Bielefeld, Germany (2015); ‘Europe, Europe’, Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo, Norway (2014); ‘Based in Berlin’, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, Germany (2011); ‘How to Work’ and ‘How To Work (more for) less’, Kunsthalle Basel, Basel, Switzerland (2011); ‘British Art Show 7 - In the days of the comet’, touring Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham, UK; Hayward Gallery, London, UK; Glasgow Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow, UK; Plymouth Arts Centre, Plymouth, UK (2010-2011); and ‘Nought to Sixty’, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, UK (2008).

This is the first exhibition of Juliette Blightman’s work in Australia.

1 December - 25 January, 2017-2018