Jane and Louise Wilson

Using film, photography and sculpture, the Wilson twins have created a series of highly theatrical and atmospheric installations that investigate the darker side of human experience. They first began working together in 1989, and have since been fascinated by the power of the unconscious mind, creating a body of work which probes collective anxieties and phobias, arouses unwanted memories, and reveals things which are usually repressed.

The Wilson sisters’ latest show veers between horror film and comedy. There’s a chunk of still photographs, but essentially they play around with the main focus of the show – a video installation piece, Erewhon, with screens on walls, ceilings and reflected in mirrors…

…Higgs, a sheep farmer, and Chowbok, an old man, decide one day to visit the forbidden country that lies beyond the mountains. When they find a pass through the mountains, Chowbok gets frightened and runs home, so Higgs goes on alone. After a dangerous journey, he wakes one morning surrounded by beautiful shepherdesses. They take his belongings, give him a medical exam, and throw him in jail…

Jane and Louise Wilson explore the psychological dynamic of architecture: preferably institutional, often defunct, rarely commercial, and mostly off limits. Working in video, they create multiscreen installations that place the viewer in a maze of moving images recorded in locations as diverse as the former East German Secret Police Headquarters in Berlin, an American cruise missile base on English soil, London’s House of Parliament, Russian cosmonaut training facilities, or a phalanx of Las Vegas casinos…