The Lewes series
Untitled Works (2000/2007) with Christoph Nissou, watercolour on paper, each 35x80cms
The Framework for this series is the annual Lewes fire procession, an anti-papal event held on Guy Fawkes Night, in which the East Sussex town commmorates the burning of 17 protestant martyrs. It is based on video work Hansen made in collaboration with Chris Dorley-Brown, which combined fortage of the procession night with another film of the same locations, shot by day six months later. Hansen then, in collaboration with painter Christoph Nissou, made these watercolour images based on pairs of night and day stills. The benign normality of the day and its apparent emptiness is invaded by the extraordinary violence of the night, and both are suspended with a poetic ambivalence that provokes the viewer to question which is more disturbing. The lightness and translucency of the watercolour, the working from light dark to contrasts with the violence of the images.
