UVA stages largest ever exhibition at 180 Studios

UVA: Synchronicity features eight new site-specific immersive works and several brand new commissions.

Pioneering immersive art collective United Visual Artists (UVA) are staging their largest ever exhibition, presented by 180 Studios at 180 The Strand, London. Tickets are available now from the 180 Studios website.

Marking the collective’s 20th anniversary, UVA: Synchronicity have taken over the subterranean spaces of 180 Studios, featuring eight new, large-scale immersive works and sensory-heightening premieres that challenge our perception of reality including a fresh collaboration with Massive Attack’s Robert Del Naja.

At the heart of the exhibition is a brand new audiovisual installation that explores the relationship between humans and animals, featuring a mesmerising soundscape created by legendary bioacoustician Bernie Krause. The previous collaboration between UVA and Krause yielded The Great Animal Orchestra, a captivating, iconic work that documents the effects of climate change and has consistently drawn huge audiences around the world.

Present Shock II – UVA’s new collaboration with Robert Del Naja, commissioned by 180 Studios and featuring machine learning by David Li – confronts the viewer with a barrage of statistical clocks displaying algorithmically generated news headlines based on current events, as well as data about the world sourced from the internet. Juxtaposing life-changing global events with the banal trivia of everyday existence, the work is a manifestation of the ‘context collapse’ that defines our present moment, disrupting our sense of time, coherence, narrative and consensus reality.

This artwork marks an inception point for UVA’s practice and re-imagines the real-time data installation the studio created in collaboration with Robert Del Naja for the band Massive Attack’s 100th Window tour in 2003; a project that helped launch UVA’s career and initiated two decades of visual collaboration with Del Naja. For Present Shock II, the sound is generated by a dynamic audio system, created by Del Naja in collaboration with adaptive producer Robert Thomas.

Synchronicity also includes a site-specific reiteration of Our Time, a multi-sensory environment that explores our perception of time, previously created specifically for 180 The Strand with a score by the late electronic musician Mira Calix, as well as newly created iterations of Vanishing Point and Topologies.

Founded in 2003 by British artist Matt Clark, UVA have been commissioned internationally by institutions including Manchester International Festival, Seoul Museum of Art and Tokyo’s YCAM, as well as London’s Barbican, Serpentine and Royal Academy of Arts. They have collaborated with musicians including Massive Attack, James Blake, and Ben Frost, filmmaker Adam Curtis and choreographers Benjamin Millepied and Dana Gingras.

UVA’s experimental practice uses light, space, sound and custom-made “kinetic instruments” to create dynamic, immersive experiences and atmospheric performances that envelop the viewer and transfigure vast architectural spaces through the interplay of light and shadow. The collective’s practice draws inspiration from science and mathematics, psychology and philosophy, using advanced digital technologies and traditional methods to create sculpture, performance and large-scale installations.

UVA: Synchronicity runs to 17 March, 2024 at 180 Studios. Tickets are available now from the 180 Studios website.

UVA: Synchronicity

180 Studios
180 The Strand, London, WC2R 1EA
12 October, 2023 – 17 March, 2024
10am – 7pm, Wednesday – Sunday (closed Mondays and Tuesdays)
For ticket sales visit: https://www.180studios.com