Stuart Shave / Modern Art are pleased to present American artist Lisa Oppenheim in her first solo show in the UK.

In Oppenheim’s 16 mm film ‘Story, Study, Print’, two projectors sit side by side in constant visual dialogue. On the left, the written word moves through the alphabet, explaining as it goes the right hand film’s present day interpretation of each letter in sequence. Q is for Quick, R is for Revolution and S is for Soul Sister… but the left and right screens are not synchronized and there is no intended beginning, no middle or end, just a rhythmic rotation of text and moving image.

The letters and their corresponding words are taken from two radical children’s alphabet posters used in 1970’s America; the Black ABC’s, used in predominantly African-American schools and the Alternative Alphabet Poster for Little and Big People, created by the political organisation ‘The Syracuse Cultural Workers Group’. Within both of the alphabets used, the inherent didactic nature of the posters were subtly subverted to provoke a political and cultural consciousness during early education stages. These alphabets also represent a desire to create alternative and progressive teaching strategies that reflected the civil rights struggles of the time.

Oppenheim’s visual retelling of these now historically and socially loaded alphabets displaces them from their original context, rendering them modern day memorials to the act of archiving itself. It is in this dislocation of text and moving image that the potential for new readings and associations can develop. As memory fails and the viewer cannot recall the delineated meaning of each letter as described by the text on the left, the intended interpretations are broken down, degrading the innate social connotations contained within them.

In 2005 Oppenheim was an artist in residence at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam and will be included in the 2006 Liverpool Biennale later this year.