Motinternational Brussels are delighted to announce the first solo exhibition of Elizabeth Price in Belgium. The artist will present a new film installation, Sleep, which forms part of a developing trilogy of her works. The title of the work refers to digital ‘sleep’ – a term used to describe a computer on stand-by mode – which is a state of readiness, rather than one of repose. The restless existential disposition invoked and arguably generated by digital technologies is reflected in a psychological mood evoking the drifting, jolting dream-state of the insomniac, as well as in the narrative action, which unfolds the apocalyptic hallucination of a synthetic sun that never sets.

Revisiting the solar imagery from Price’s 2013 video Sunlight, Sleep speeds chronologically through thousands of images of the sun. From glass-plate slides produced in the early twentieth century to digital moving image generated at its close, Price presents this archive as a staccato animation, a rapidly ticking meter for a narrative related by a self-proclaimed ‘dramatic chorus’. The chorus ‘speaks’ via motion graphics that flow across the screen, as a choir of synchronized synthetic voices, and using the ‘RSVP’ format of digital speed-reading systems, designed to enhance productivity and focus concentration.

Sleep is peopled only by women. With a group of dancing and singing women appearing as its visual proxy, the chorus claims to have gathered all the sunlight of the twentieth century and concentrated it into a relentless stream, in order to illuminate the ritualized action: hosiery models, striking stylized, melodramatically photophobic poses, accompanied by Crystal Gayle, singing in reverse.

The second part of the trilogy A History of Hosiery will be completed in 2015.

Elizabeth Price (b. 1966, Bradford) lives and works in London. In 2012 Price was awarded the prestigious Turner Prize for her solo exhibition HERE at the Baltic Centre in Gateshead. A major solo exhibition of her work is concurrently on show at the Julia Stoschek Collection, Dusseldorf.

Recent solo exhibitions and screenings include presentations at Hå gamle prestegard, Norway (2014) Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Montreal; Contemporary Art Society, London; Focal Point Gallery, Southend-On-Sea (all 2013), Tate Britain, London; Bloomberg SPACE, London; Bielefelder Kunstverein, Germany (all 2012); Chisenhale Gallery, London; New Museum, New York (both 2011). Group exhibitions include USER GROUP DISCO, IndieMovingImage Programme, CAM Fundacao Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon, Art Basel Film, Basel, A Thousand Doors, The Gennadius Library of The American School of Classical Studies, Athens. Curated by Iwona Blazwick; The Surface of the World: Architecture and the Moving Image, Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, Manila; Private Utopia: Contemporary Works from the British Council Collection, Japanese Museum Tour, Japan (various venues) (all 2014); Assembly: A Survey of Recent Artists’ Film and Video in Britain 2008–2013, Tate Britain, London; British and Polish Art Since 1990, CCA, Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw curated by Tom Morton & Marek Gozdziewski; The Objects, Glasgow Sculpture Studios, Glasgow (all 2013) The Sculpture Show, Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh (2012) British Art Show 7 – In the Days of the Comet, Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham; Hayward Gallery, London; Centre for Contemporary Art, Glasgow; Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery, Plymouth (2011).

All images: Elizabeth Price, Sleep, 2014, Installation view at Motinternational Brussels, Courtesy of the artist and Motinternational Brussels and London