Alex Rizkalla spent considerable time in Liverpool researching local sources in preparation for his installation. Part of this research involved collecting a mass of materials from second-hand and antiquarian bookshops. This is typical of the artist's practice, which integrates site-specific information with the recurring themes of time, degeneration and mortality. Rizkalla's prevailing concern is to create configurations of objects, images, and visual effects that insinuate themselves into the viewer's memory. His installations are visually active, often using old slide projectors to produce sequences of images. Beyond this utilitarian purpose, the projectors function as significant objects in their own right, while the sound they produce adds an acoustic component to the visitor's experience of the space.


For his Liverpool installation, the artist has fabricated a multiple projection machine from the mechanisms of discarded projectors. At the entrance to the installation is a shelf holding a case of medical instruments that the artist has collected on his travels. The walls just inside the space are crowded with boxes and frames containing '60s memorabilia, including remnants of Beatle-mania and anti-Vietnam posters and stickers. The room is illuminated by a series of projected images. Shown in rapid sequence the slides animate Eadweard Muybridge's studies of human locomotion: Man Standing at Rifle Drill, Man Assuming Kneeling Position and Aiming Rifle and Man Falling Prone and Aiming Rifle.


From speakers scattered around the room comes the sound of an old recording of the Surgeon General of Victoria (Australia) making diagnoses. Heartbeats heard through a stethoscope are identified by name and age, followed by a brief clinical description of the patient's condition, for example: "Anthony Bond, 55, murmur in the left ventricle." All of these forms of representation - the memorabilia, the analytical photographs of movement, and the taxonomy of disease - imply objectivity. In each, the human and historical circumstances they document are kept at a distance. At the same time, however, Rizkalla allows another, more subjective and sensory response to such objects through his production of optical and tactile experiences.

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Alex Rizkalla spent considerable time in Liverpool researching local sources in preparation for his installation. Part of this research involved collecting a mass of materials from second-hand and antiquarian bookshops. This is typical of the artist's practice, which integrates site-specific information with the recurring themes of time, degeneration and mortality. Rizkalla's prevailing concern is to create configurations of objects, images, and visual effects that insinuate themselves into the viewer's memory. His installations are visually active, often using old slide projectors to produce sequences of images. Beyond this utilitarian purpose, the projectors function as significant objects in their own right, while the sound they produce adds an acoustic component to the visitor's experience of the space.


For his Liverpool installation, the artist has fabricated a multiple projection machine from the mechanisms of discarded projectors. At the entrance to the installation is a shelf holding a case of medical instruments that the artist has collected on his travels. The walls just inside the space are crowded with boxes and frames containing '60s memorabilia, including remnants of Beatle-mania and anti-Vietnam posters and stickers. The room is illuminated by a series of projected images. Shown in rapid sequence the slides animate Eadweard Muybridge's studies of human locomotion: Man Standing at Rifle Drill, Man Assuming Kneeling Position and Aiming Rifle and Man Falling Prone and Aiming Rifle.


From speakers scattered around the room comes the sound of an old recording of the Surgeon General of Victoria (Australia) making diagnoses. Heartbeats heard through a stethoscope are identified by name and age, followed by a brief clinical description of the patient's condition, for example: "Anthony Bond, 55, murmur in the left ventricle." All of these forms of representation - the memorabilia, the analytical photographs of movement, and the taxonomy of disease - imply objectivity. In each, the human and historical circumstances they document are kept at a distance. At the same time, however, Rizkalla allows another, more subjective and sensory response to such objects through his production of optical and tactile experiences.