Ikon shows Training (2008), a video projection by emerging British artist Oliver Beer. This is his first presentation in a public gallery.
Housed in Ikon’s Tower Room, Beer’s work depicts a role-play scenario where a group of young adults are learning to be volunteers for a telephone counselling service.
The group listens to a woman’s voice as she explains that she was abused as a child. She is reading from a script written by Beer, but the trainees are unaware of this, and as she speaks the camera captures their emotional reactions. The discomforting intimacy of the cinematography makes us voyeurs, as we cannot stop looking and listening.
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