ONE ARTIST | ONE WORK: Sarah Forrest, 'The Unit'

For the next online event in the ONE ARTIST | ONE WORK series, Sarah Forrest will discuss her new work, The Unit (2021).

The Unit can be viewed for free online for the month of July here, with captions by Valery Tough. The discussion event will take place on Tuesday 13 July, 7.30pm.

Are we seeing what we’re supposed to see? What clues are being hinted at and how are we, the viewer or reader, caught up in the narrative? This new work by Glasgow-based artist Sarah Forrest takes on the detective novel as its starting point in order to unravel how our attention is shifted when we are on the trail of a sleuthing mystery.
In detecting, the act of inquiry means that our senses become heightened as every object encountered could be laced with apparent or hidden meanings. The detective novel supposes that logic will ultimately triumph over dark forces. We are led from A to B to C in a sequence that foregrounds rationality and precision. It is the triumph of close looking.
The Unit was commissioned for Glasgow International 2021. Supported by Glasgow School of Art (GSA) and Maryhill Burgh Halls.

Image description: A video still shows a dark room, we are close to a wooden table on which are placed two glass objects. We can see the lines of where the table could fold down, and the curve of the table edge across the center of the image. A bottle, and next to it sits a thin vase with green shoots in it. On top of the objects sits text, large white san serif font that reads ‘ONE’.