Jane and Louise Wilson are Newcastle born twins who were nominated for the Turner Prize in 1999 for Gamma, a film in which they documented the abandoned military silos at Greenham Common...
Who? Newcastle born twins Jane and Louise Wilson were nominated for the Turner Prize in 1999 for Gamma, a film in which they documented the abandoned military silos at Greenham Common. They are known for their hyper real style, created by their use of a Stedicam and a 4ml lens, similar to that used in horror movies, which gives the film a disconcertingly druggy effect. Louise once likened their work to going to the pictures on a winter’s afternoon and emerging blurry eyed and blinking into the sunlight.
What? While researching in the National Film Archive in Kiev, the artists came across a highly disturbing film by director Vladimir Shevchenko. The filmmaker had succeeded in gaining access to Chernobyl in the immediate aftermath of the nuclear meltdown in 1986. The film documents the fatal clean up operation, depicting ashen miners struggling to save a reactor from collapsing amid a cloud of toxic dust. Like many of the men depicted on camera, Shevchenko died a few months later of radiation poisoning. The Wilson’s’ film The Toxic Camera sets out to discover what happened to Shevchenko’s equipment and found that his camera was so highly radioactive, it had to be buried in a decontamination site outside Kiev.
"Forma commissioned the work to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster."
Why? Forma commissioned the work to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster. It will be screened alongside photographs the artists took of Pripyat, an abandoned town inside the 30km exclusion zone that housed the workers of the nuclear power station. The artists documented decaying swimming pools, schools and hospitals slowly being subsumed by the sulphurous landscape about them.
Jane and Louise Wilson at The Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester runs until January 27, 2013.
Text by Jessica Lack