Terrain Vague
2007Exhibition: Stopover. 50thVenice Biennale 2003
Central to Gussin’s work is an exploration of the point where time, distance, reality and imagination collide and the physical presence of the coach is countered by other works which refer to other places, other time and other realities. A specially commissioned sound-work playing from the coach consists of road movie soundtracks re-scored in reverse, so introducing temporal travel to the notion of physical travel. The floor of the space has been replaced by a chroma-key blue floor that can simultaneously be “anywhere and nowhere”.
David Thorpe and Sarah Glennie (Henry Moore Contemprary Projects)
The coach was dissembled, shipped across to the island, then reconstructed inside the building so that it appeared as trapped as a ship in a bottle, forever waiting to be released to fulfil its function - a reflection on the narrative of his journey. A film screened at the back of the vehicle transcribed this relationship between the physicality of travel and the psychology of expectation and memory into a formal, narrative construction. A camera on the outside of the coach recorded segments of the journey through the Alps. These segments were then edited into a Möbius strip of recollection: they ran forwards until the moment of arrival at the garage at the end of the St Gotthard Pass, where the order was reversed and the film returned back to the beginning of the journey, only to start over again. The time twist held the geography in an idealized, geometrical place, like a distant memory played over and over until it becomes free of context and specificity.
Sally O’Reilly (Frieze).
Line drawing ‘Nothing and Nowhere’ used for sides of the bus.