One room comprising two works: Catherine’s Room, 2001 and Four Hands, 2001.

Viola was one of the earliest artists to utilise film and video in a fine-art context and through his depictions of raw human emotion has achieved popular acclaim in recent years. He has continued to utilise progressively more advanced equipment to realize works in which the technology can be hidden in order to focus on highly staged moving images. Influenced by both Western and Eastern art history and spiritual practices, Viola’s work frequently evokes mystical or religious experience.

Catherine’s Room, based on a fourteenth century predella by Andrea di Bartolo, presents scenes from the life of St Catherine across a sequence of five screens, using contrasts of light and dark to dramatic effect. Four Hands concentrates on actions made by a pair of disembodied hands reminiscent of Indian ‘mudras’, the symbolic gestures of Buddhist and Hindu religious iconography. Both works characterise the more intimate aspects of Viola’s practice, which can be contrasted with his monumental projects dealing with universal themes of birth, death and regeneration.