Information from www.hansardgallery.org.uk:

'Mesmerising, elegiac journeys: Ergin Çavusoglu’s film installations transform the gallery experience into something immersive and compelling.'

'Raised in Bulgaria as part of the Turkish minority and now based in London, Çavusoglu combines multiple projections and viewpoints, filmed in diverse, often marginalised locations. More ‘poetic description’ than documentary, these works reflect upon shifts in the global geopolitical order, often drawing upon the artist’s own personal experience of migration.

The exhibition features two new works - Point of Departure and Adrift. Point of Departure was filmed in both Stansted Airport and Trabzon Airport, Turkey, and contrasts the experience of transit and travel through the perspectives of two characters. The work focuses on what Çavusoglu calls “the end points of the European idea” by contrasting two airports on the fringes of the Atlantic and the former Soviet bloc. Weaving together footage from both, he allows us to look again at the apparently ‘everyday’ act of crossing frontier points: these ‘non-places’ become strange, beautiful and unsettling.

Adrift provides a counter-point to Point of Departure’s linear storyline. Intertwining footage shot across Europe and the United States, projected images cut between cities and seascapes, where disparate characters drift into apparently endless journeys. Intense and rhythmical, the work probes the history of migration, forced or otherwise.

A third work, Dissonant Rhythms I, 2004, features in the Gallery Project Room. Two monitors contrast film footage of ‘Fort van Ertbrand’, a military headquarters on the outskirts of Antwerp, completed before the outbreak of World War I, with that of bunkers, parts of a tank trap, built during World War II in the same area. The sound of footsteps forms an unsettling soundtrack to the work, which evokes the haunting emotional and physical presence these war remnants still retain.

Ergin Çavusoglu’s recent exhibitions include a one-person exhibition at Dundee Contemporary Arts; representing Turkey at the Venice Biennale 2003; the 8th Istanbul Biennial; 3rd Berlin Biennale; inclusion in Becks Futures 2004 and the British Art Show 6.

More information about the artist can be found on his website:
www.ergincavusoglu.co.uk'