Exhibition title - 5 solutions

Version 1

In a world where everyone truly appears to be seeking their 15 minutes of fame – viz Big Brother, X Factor, Look Good Naked, 10 Years Younger and their stable mates – this performance and video work goes to the one area of life that has not yet been splayed open in the media for public consumption. 5 Solutions takes our fascination with the minutiae, the pain and the pathos of other people’s lives one step further, to an area of life not yet explored and exploited – the conspicuously private interaction between client and therapist.

This performance and video work builds on the classic Gloria videos from the 1970s. In the original educational series, Gloria, a young divorcee, took her problems to 3 different therapists – each masters in their therapeutic fields. As each worked with her in a one-off, hour long session, to find a solution to her issues, the sessions were recorded for student study. Over 30 years later they remain the only documented recordings of client/therapist interactions readily available.

5 Solutions takes this concept a step further. The exhibition starts with a performance piece on Day One, when 5 volunteer clients, each with a specific problem, visit 5 different therapists over the course of the day. These live sessions will take place in parallel, at set times throughout the afternoon and can be observed by the audience through one-way viewing windows. Audience members can move freely between the viewing rooms where the therapists will be working. Visitors to the exhibition may elect to dip in and out of the full range of sessions, to observe one session from start to finish, or to follow a client or therapist by staying with them through the course of the afternoon as they work with different people.

The hour long sessions sessions will be video recorded and on subsequent days the recordings will be played in each of the therapy rooms.

The 5 therapies have been selected from across the broad spectrum of what is termed ‘brief, solution focused’ approaches, providing very different and very visual illustrations of how therapeutic relationships are formed and solutions developed.

This work raises many questions about the nature of public exposure and the quest for fame, our right to privacy, and the fallacy of confidentiality and trust in this media savvy world.
On the final day of the exhibition the 5 clients, the therapists, the general public and the media are invited to a discussion of the issues raised by this performance piece.

NB Therapies will include CBT, NLPt, Provocative Therapy, Constellations and Art Therapy.


Version 2

Roger Hiorns comes straight to 5 Solutions after the success of Seizure, his installation in a derelict council house in Summer 2008. Variously described as ‘unexpected beauty nestling like glittering treasure’ (the Times); ‘a sci-fi nightmare, both fascinating and repellent’ (the Guardian); and ‘disorienting, luscious awful’ (Modern Painter); we anticipate this coming exhibition to be equally challenging.

Hiorns has stated that he likes to work with materials that take him out of the equation ‘that make me, the artist, disappear’ (The Tate). Despite this wish, his work with materials that transform and transfix is becoming something of a trademark: past works have used soap solutions, fire and copper sulphate, to bring the imaginary to life.

For this forthcoming exhibition Hiorns has taken the challenge to create site specific works using 5 different solutions, some of which he has not exploited before. As ‘an artist of emissions, of excess and the uncontrollable’ (Searle) his audience can look forward to inspirational new works in a stunningly poetic venue.

St Pancras Crypt – a damp, subterranean expanse of vaulted tunnels - lends itself perfectly to these works of such sublime beauty and mystery. 5 Solutions promises to be every bit as controversial as Hiorns’ previous shows – love his work or hate it, it cannot be ignored.