Casey Smallwood

HELM: CASEY SMALLWOOD

Solo Art Exhibition

Casey Smallwood's solo exhibition for the HELM series, The Acting Project, is a multimedia installation that consists of five video projections. The Acting Project takes as its starting point an exploration of the parallels between acting out the role of a character and the acting out of one's daily persona. Viewed together, Sets, Audition, and The Moment of Engagement: Special Features from The Rehearsal reveal the situations around public performance - letting the viewer in on the processes of acting while blurring the line between documentary and fiction. The videos fuse scripted and unscripted dialogue, creating a dynamic between the theatrical and the real, alluding to both Reality TV and psychological experimentation.

Through the physical installation of the work the viewer is also implicated as a participant, extending the project’s narrative into the real space of the exhibition and allowing individual experiences to unfold within each viewing.

Casey Smallwood lives and works in Chicago. She received her MFA from The University of Chicago in 2008. Her work has been included in the film and video screening, Band of Outsiders, at the College Art Association's ARTspace Media Lounge curated by Catherine Sullivan, the Angels Gate Cultural Center's exhibition Emigrant/Immigrant curated by Lara Bullock, Rapid Pulse International Performance Festival, Chicago, among others. She was an Artist in Residence at the Banff Centre's Our Literal Speed thematic residency in Banff, Canada in 2013.