copy-of-04-beheld-rmit-gallery-flickr.jpg

BEHELD: Graeme Miller

Graeme Miller began work on BEHELD in 2006.
This ongoing project involves visiting sites around the world where people have fallen from the wheelbays of aircraft and recording the sound there while capturing an 180º image of the sky.

These fisheye images are projected into fragile glass bowls with the audio activated within the glass by the act of lifting it. In this moment the holder becomes both physically and poetically connected to the anonymous individual who has fallen, and to the colliding resonances of place, geopolitics and history in the global landscape.

BEHELD focuses on a small aspect of the largely hidden narrative of the thousands who routinely die in migration. Through evocation of place and in the gesture of holding, it connects to the few who physically fall from the sky into the peripheries of international airports, mostly in economically fortified countries.

As an installation, BEHELD can be shown at two different scales and can adapt to gallery and black box contexts.
It was first presented at Dilston Grove, London (now Southwark Park Galleries), and has since been exhibited across Europe and Australia.

Graeme continues to visit, photograph and record places around the world where people have fallen from aircraft; this is an ongoing and expanding work.

By connecting you so resonantly with the subject matter, Miller offers a poetic interlude for reflection
Martin Coomer, Big Issue

An exquisite, desperately moving piece of work
Lyn Gardner, Guardian


BEHELD was originally produced by Mark Godber at Artsadmin and created with financial support from Arts Council England and the Henry Moore Foundation.

Presented at Performing Mobilities RMIT Gallery Melbourne Australia (2015); Belluard Bollwerk Festival Fribourg, Switzerland (2015); University of Jena, Germany (2013); On Taking Care Symposium, Queen Mary University of London (2012); Hellerau – European Centre for the Arts, Dresden (2010), Teatro Laboral, Gijón, Spain (2010), Stephen Lawrence Gallery London (2009; The National Review of Live Art, The Arches, Glasgow (2008), Tarsaskor Gallery, Budapest Hungary (2008), Le Quai, Angers, France (2007); Theatre Workshop, Edinburgh (2007), Rotterdamse Schouwburg Netherlands (2006). Dilston Grove (now Southwark Park Galleries), London (2006).

Graeme Miller is an artist, composer and performance-maker working internationally across a wide range of media and is known for his sited, performative social works. His practice emerged from UK performance of the 1980s as co-founder of the influential theatre company Impact Theatre Co-operative. While continuing to make his own stage works that include A Girl Skipping (1990), he evolved a wide-ranging practice as an artist. He makes work that often responds to ideas about place and time, creating situational pieces that invite a shift of attention in audiences. He also composes music and designs sound for theatre, dance, TV and film, for and with artists including Tim Etchells, Shobana Jeyasingh, Forced Entertainment, and Cornelia Parker.

BEHELD at Dilston Grove (2006)