Projectile Motion

Mon, 8 Aug 2011 | By Tom Banks

Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist will project a retrospective career of installations onto a range of canvases including a chandelier made of underpants when she comes to the Hayward Gallery next month.

Other canvas ephemera includes monitors in a bathing suit, a model of a suburban house and the laps of visitors. Bear with us.

Working across video, sculpture and installation, Rist will present thirty pieces charting her career from its beginnings in 1980.

Principally Rist creates films – often playful, psychedelic, sensuous and provocative – exploring themes and imagery of birth, death, family, love, the body and the natural world.

 Expect size, scale and environmental context to be adapted. Selfless in The Bath of Lava encourages visitors to look down onto ‘a naked human beseeching them from a tiny hole in the floor’ according to the gallery.

All of Rist’s pieces are in the context of immersive environments – some like the meditative Lobe of The Lung landscape, (pictured) are quite overt yet the viewing experience seems to be passive.

Pipilotti Rist runs from 28 September 2011 - 8 January 2012 at the Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London SE1