Hilary Lloyd (*1964 in London) points the lens of her camera at the showplaces of urban life, capturing the modern city as a place of voyeurism, fetishism, and sexual ambivalence. In long-term studies she has created striking sequences of people involved in the daily rituals and routine gestures of self-expression. Craftspeople, waiters, skaters, and club-goers are the objects of her examination, as are ordinary objects and buildings or plants and flowers. This is supplemented by abstract colors and shapes that recall fluid quicksilver or shards of glass and rotate like bright, concentric circles. The installations, which are often accessible, are made up of monitors and projections elegantly and carefully positioned in the space, thus achieving a presence of their own and enveloping the viewer not only in the world of images, but also in their manifestation as media-based and tangible objects. Exhibition schedule: BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, October 21, 2011-January 8, 2012 | Museum fur Gegenwartskunst, Basel, May 12-September 16, 2012

Text by: Kirsty Bell, Sabeth Buchmann, Pablo Lafuente