‘Kim Wilde’s Heart of Darkness’ is the first UK exhibition of New Zealand-based artist Tahi Moore. Moore’s work involves video, sculpture and text, constructing narratives that create associations which first appear unconnected but taken as a whole invite a deep and fertile new imaginative realm.
The exhibition includes over fifteen new video works which have been created through a partnership with the Royal Over-Seas League, an organisation which champions international collaboration, and Hospitalfield in Arbroath, Scotland. These partnerships invite artists from a Commonwealth country to undertake a residency which then results in an exhibition in the UK. The title ‘Kim Wilde’s Heart of Darkness’ refers to Kim Wilde’s 1981 song ‘Cambodia’ – both a heart breaking story of an Air Force wife who loses her husband in the Vietnam War and typical synthy 80s Top of the Pops tune.
Moore’s video works retain a formal and seductive beauty. Images of mountains, domestic interiors of holiday homes, lights of synthesizers or the lapping of the sea carry a resonance and act like visual triggers. The viewer is invited to piece clues together and work out the puzzle to find some kind of meaning with images full of suggested connections, necessary false starts and potential resolutions.
Moore often uses literary references and characters to construct new scenarios and scripts. These often have a Beckett-esque flow where strange thoughts start to loop in endless circles. Sometimes the text comes away from the video and literally becomes ‘stuck’ on the screen, unable to move or progress.