A dancer turns awkwardly to inspect her foot. Three men gyrate together to keep a large hula hoop spinning. In a darkened room, gallery visitors meet each other as they reach into a cone of swirling light. These are some of the actions and encounters that await in Pause, turn, touch, reach.
Beginning with Eadweard Muybridge’s revelatory photographs of human movement from the 1880s, the exhibition brings together sculptures, video, photographs and installations by artists spanning a century – from Edgar Degas in the early 1900s to Gabriella and Silvana Mangano in the early 2000s.
Daniel Crooks, paying contemporary homage to Muybridge, tracks his own movement in a sinuous sculpture. Joanna Piotrowska photographs women in poses that suggest both dance and self-defence. The artist duo nova Milne, in their video installation, choreograph an endless meeting and parting of their bodies.
Finally, viewers’ own bodies come into play in Anthony McCall’s much-loved ‘solid light’ work Meeting you halfway II – an installation that invites us to locate our own ever-changing place in the world relative to others.