Philip Napier: Gauge

The installation "Gauge" by the irish artist Philip Napier is contexted by what is commonly known as "Bloody Sunday." On January 30, 1972, British soldiers shot 14 unarmed civilians at a civil rights demonstration in Derry. In the following years, demands for a public apology jury by the British government for the events on "Bloody Sunday" grew increasingly loud.

Philip Napier installed 14 loud speakers, which hang on weighing scales. The speakers emit the words "Sorry, I'm sorry I really am sorry I apologize sorry…"! The sound pressure increases the weight of the speakers on the scales.

In effect, the work operates as an alternating tribunal attempting to weight up or gauge the value of the apology

The debate about apologies for atrocities as a post colonial condition spans the globe and reaches from Japan and its treatment of prisoners of war in World War II, South Africa's truth commission, the war tribunal in The Hague to Israel's recent attacks on the Palestinians.

Philip Napier studied at the University of Ulster in Belfast at the Falmouth School of Art in Cornwall and at Manchester Polytechnic. He has displayed solo exhibitions at Orchard Gallery in Derry, at PS1 in New York (1997) and at Gallery Video Inn in Vancouver, Canada. He has also shown his work at several group exhibitions, for example at the Irish Museum of Modern Art/Dublin, Gallery Diana Nikki Marquette/Paris, Kwangju Biennial/South Korea, Biennial Sao Paulo/Brazil and Santa Monica Museum/USA.

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Philip Napier. Gauge
Kurator: Norbert Biba