The South-African born, Berlin-based artist Candice Breitz first shot to international art-world stardom with an installation simply entitled Mother/Father – a piece which, according to the overhwelming consensus of critics, curators, artists and dealers, was the hit of the 2003 Venice Biennale. The work – since shown in London, at the White Cube Gallery - consisted of a series of television monitors, each one broadcasting a series of cunningly manipulated and edited film clips featuring a famous male or female movie star. The men talked alone in one circle, the women in another, all ingeniously crosscut to produce a communal dialogue on the subject of mothering and fathering, drawn exclusively from the cliches of Hollywood scriptwriting.

Since the successful reception of that work, Breitz has been inundated with invitations to exhibit at galleries and modern art museums all over the world. For her latest work, she has chosen to collaborate with the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead. The result is a compelling and unexpectedly haunting installation – displayed to great effect in the ostensibly unpromising vertical space of the gallery’s principal stairwell.

The artist has plumbed the vertiginous depths of this echoing, post-industrial tower with 30 video monitors. This time, those whose images are broadcast on the television screens are not themselves celebrities, but members of the general public brought together by their fellow feeling for someone who most certainly was. They are preserved in the act of singing their way – like a chorus – through an entire album of songs written by the late John Lennon. Breitz calls the piece A Portrait of John Lennon, although it seems to be just as much a composite portrait of his fan club, embodied by the isolated, passionately singing faces of these admiring devotees of his work.

The...

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