Elín Jakobsdóttir

‘Janus’, the scripted twenty-four piece photography series, is our first encounter with Jakobsdóttir; leading us through the gallery door, the black and white prints narrate a jolting cinematic sequence, where images recur from different perspectives and with slight nuances of change. The strong aesthetics of the images are an appropriate introductory piece but the work becomes stronger for the exhibition surrounding it; as the ideas of Janus, the two-faced Roman god gifted with the ability to simultaneously see the past and present, manifest in more inventive incarnations.

This duality exists in ‘Two-Sided Table’; an invented object, with echoes of reality but firmly seated within the artists conception. The glass panel between the two meeting sides simultaneously separates and brings together the paper cut-outs creeping upwards. We are confronted with a third sculpted piece of paper hung on the wall, harking back to an image of a spider’s web in ‘Janus’. The ambiguous parallels of the photograph and its re-invented incarnation sit opposite.

After ‘Wooden Horsebox’, a large plywood structure of unknown purpose, leaves us somewhat lost, any dissatisfaction is reconciled as the three video pieces saved for last enrich this lost object with a context. ‘Horsebox’ begins as an almost instructive piece of film-making, where two dungaree-clad men proceed to build the ‘Wooden Horsebox’. The developing narrative takes surreal turns into an almost comical portrait of the functional and the functionless. Likewise the two sensitively shot Super-8 films depict the mundane with a touch that enlightens an acute awareness of enduring matters that would usually be unconsciously devoured.

The combination of photography, objects and video creates a complete image, with depth and insight. As fragments Jakobsdóttir’s works have a resolved beauty, but their enduring impact is as a collective. The mapped landscape of the artist’s input is finally revealed in the only appropriate way. This slow arrival reflects the developing logic of our subconscious—what Jakobsdóttir had been illustrating from the start.