InterAccess is pleased to present The Watch Man, a new major video and sound installation by internationally acclaimed London-based artist Shona Illingworth. In the exhibition, the artist weaves together the physical and the psychological, creating an immersive environment where a complex sound composition surrounds the viewer. Using feonic audio technologies originally developed by the US Navy, the installation activates the gallery space, turning the floor into a speaker that resonates with sound. Accompanied by a large circular projection screen suspended above a floating red floor, this moving and evocative work reveals the impact of conflict on an individual over time.

Please join us for a special opening reception on ,Friday April 6, 6:00 pm at InterAccess Electronic Media Arts Centre, 9 Ossington Avenue. Artist Shona Illingworth will give a talk during the beginning at 6:30 pm. The Watch Man is presented in association with the 20th Annual Images Festival. For more information about the festival please visit http://www.imagesfestival.com .

More information about The Watch Man:

The Watch Man examines how individual memory refers to a traumatic set of collective memories over a lifetime period. It explores the conflict between trauma memory and the need for a coherent life story, through the experience of an 80 year old watchmaker, who, as a 19 year old British soldier, experienced one of the most deeply affecting and shocking events in the Second World War. The film, projected onto a suspended circular screen, lingers on prosaic details of the watchmaker's workshop and living space, gradually encapsulating an enclosed and disconnected world that is set in stark contrast to a dark and disrupting trauma memory that persistently breaks through. A complex sound composition will surround the viewer resonating from the gallery floor using the unique capabilities of audio technologies originally developed by the US Navy.

The Watch Man was developed in dialogue with neuro-psychologist Professor Martin A. Conway, whose internationally recognized expertise on trauma memory, confabulation and the role of memory in the formation of a sense of self has informed the complex structure of this work.

Shona Illingworth is known for her evocative and compelling video and sound installations, which explore the experience of memory and the formation of identity in situations of social confinement, dislocation, conflict and trauma. Her exploration of the internal psychology of her subjects is often conveyed through the architecture and landscape that surrounds them. She has shown her work extensively in Europe and the U.K. and has received several high-profile awards including, commissions for Channel 4 Television, the Hayward Gallery (London) and the Wellcome Trust. Recent projects include Karlag, filmed in a former gulag in Kazakhstan, and 5x1, filmed in a male lifer prison in the U.K. Shona Illingworth lives and works in London. More information about Shona Illingworth can be found at http://www.shonaillingworth.net/.

Rhonda Corvese is a Toronto-based independent curator and assistant curator at the Art Gallery of York University. Her curatorial projects strive to challenge the role of the curator, artist and audience in the presentation and engagement of contemporary art. Recent projects include Iris Hüussler's The Legacy of Joseph Wagenbach, a site-specific installation; The Idea of North, a sound-art group exhibition in Halifax, Iceland and Norway; and Angelika Middendorf and Andreas Schimanski's video installation 25sec.- Toronto. Rhonda Corvese would like to thank the Canada Council for the Arts' Grants to Professional Independent Critics and Curators programme.

Professor Martin A. Conway is a neuropsychologist and one of the foremost international experts in the field of autobiographical memory. His work explores the centrality of memory to our sense of self. He currently holds a prestigious Economic and Social Research Council Professorial Fellowship at Leeds University in the U.K., where he has established the Memory Research Group. He has written extensively on autobiographical memory.

The Watch Man is funded by Arts Council England and the Canada Council for the Arts. Additional support was generously provided by FeONIC plc.

InterAccess gratefully acknowledges the support of the Toronto Arts Council, the Ontario Arts Council, the Canada Council for the Arts. For their generous support of this exhibition, InterAccess thanks the Images Festival, Arts Council England, Grolsch Premium Lager Canada, FeONIC Audio Technologies, David Liss of the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art.

Press kits of the exhibition are available upon request.