Peacock is the leading contemporary visual arts organisation in Aberdeen and the NE of Scotland, bringing artists and the public together through exhibitions‚ events‚ talks‚ residencies‚ film screenings‚ gigs and workshops to make and present art in exciting and innovative ways.
Invisible Oil
04 October - 15 November, 2008
Opening Friday 3 October, 6 - 8pm
Artist's Talk Saturday 4 October, 2pm.
Admission free
Invisible Oil comments upon the invisible aspects of the North east oil industry, from the invisible crude itself, to the discarded plastic rubbish produced from it.
The show by Austrian artist Ernst Logar features prints and sculptural pieces made with/using crude oil, alongside a series of new photographs and documentation of the artist's efforts to access key locations in the oil sector not visible to the public.
Photo: Ernst Logar, 2007
One piece forms a mirror of moving oil in the form of a perspex box continuously pumped through with crude. A second work, a series of prints produced with crude oil and plastic debris, reunites the materials which of course come from the same origin.
Also on show is a new series of photographs of oil-rig shaped sculptures of plastic rubbish - the rarely recognized evidence of the oil industry's permeation of all aspects of modern life.
The artist assembled each sculpture from rubbish found on one of Aberdeen's beaches and photographed the rig he constructed against the shore-line of that same beach.
While many North Sea Rigs have been named after Scottish birds – such as the 'Brent Goose', Logar's petroleum-based structures carry the names of the most deprived neighbourhoods of Aberdeen. In doing this he suggests a connection between social inequality in a city that is nominally one of the richest in the UK and the politics of oil, the source of its wealth.
Logar's work is based on painstaking research. In the exhibition he documents his communication with companies from the North-east oil industry as he attempts to gain access to crucial locations in the production process.
The series forms a new contribution to Ernst Logar's long-term project 'Non Public Spaces' which deals with spaces which are not open to ordinary citizens, but have a crucial political, economic or social impact on our lives.
Download artist's statement / press text 38.76KB here