Roots & Culture is pleased to host a screening of artist Nina Barnett’s videos. She will share solo work and pieces made with collaborators, including Robyn Nesbitt, her partner in the duo Ruth Anne. Her/their video work, often made for the gallery, offers cycles, meditations, delicate balancing acts and stunning landscapes that seem to expand under the undivided attention of an audience. This is Nina’s first comprehensive screening and is also her last Chicago show before she moves back to South Africa at the end of May. Please join us for this rare opportunity to view this special collection of her moving image work.

“I’m at this moment of eminent change – after having lived in the States for 8 years, I am moving back to Johannesburg. This screening includes the last work I made right before leaving in 2007 (Inside Out) and a new piece, still in progress, at the point of return.

In this collection of works there is a contrast between close-up and far-out, of slowly moving landscapes and rapid, staccato animation, of reflection and transparency. The environments depicted shift with almost every piece, but each is made in relation to the place in which they are situated. There are many ways to know, to research and observe a location – this collection represents a selected trajectory of possible outcomes.” – Nina Barnett

The program spans 2007 to 2015 and includes her brand new video “The Collection”.
Total running time is 1 hour.

Nina Barnett:
Nina Barnett uses drawing, photography, moving image and installation to examine particular locations in relation to the body, (deep) time and vertical scale. Her work seeks connections between the geographical, the experienced and the materiality of surfaces, and playfully questions the relationship between the theoretical, the planned and the accidental.

Nina is a South African currently living in Chicago. She received her MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and her BFA from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. She has exhibited her work locally and abroad – notably at Gallery 400 and Heaven Gallery in Chicago, David Krut Gallery and Harvestworks in New York, KNIPSU in Bergen, Norway and at the Johannesburg Art Gallery. Notable residencies include the Cite des Arts in Paris; AIR in Bergen, Norway; PROGR in Bern, Switzerland and Summer Forum, Joshua Tree.

Ruth Anne (Nina Barnett and Robyn Nesbitt):
Nina Barnett (b.1983) and Robyn Nesbitt (b.1984) have been working collaboratively for ten years, mostly at a distance (Barnett currently lives in Chicago, Nesbitt in Johannesburg) and periodically in close proximity on residencies. Over time, they have begun to describe the
collaboration as a “third person”, separate from their individual lives and practices. Their sense of the others presence, when together or apart, makes space for a distinct way of thinking and making. Their particular personalities (one subjective and sensitive, the other cerebral and pragmatic) form a necessary duality in the process, and in the work that results.

Nesbitt and Barnett have exhibited locally and internationally. Their work has been exhibited in Johannesburg, at the Parking Gallery, Outlet Project Room, Convocation House, Johannesburg Art Gallery. In Cape Town at VANSA, the 2007 Spier Contemporary and internationally at Monkey Town, New York; Fort Worth Contemporary Arts Gallery, Texas; ISIS ARTS, Newcastle, UK; and Galleri 3,14 Bergen, Norway.

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Tags: Nina Bernett, Roots and Culture, Ruth Anne