ART CITIES:London-The World Made New
The group exhibition “The World Made New” is the fourth of the five exhibitions that make up Pi Artworks London’s Curatorial Season (October 2016 – July 2017). Five curators have been invited to devise and develop their own curatorial project. The season started with “What’s The Riddle”, with works that return to fundamental formal questions to artistic work and its system in their alternative conception of time.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Pi Artworks Gallery Archive
The exhibition “The World Made New” at Pi Artworks Gallery in London, draws resonances in the work of: Sovay Berriman, Ilana Halperin, Iz Öztat, Lindsay Seers, and Michelle Williams Gamaker, through personal myths of history and landscape. The title of the exhibition alludes in part to a reconception of the world as seen with each artist’s particular vision. But it may equally suggest the framing of consciousness itself, being as much about an imagined inner world transposed upon the world as they find it today. Often departing from superficial reality, the diverse narrative practices of the artists find another kind of truth in relation to land and time. Self-referential approaches blend autobiographical details with personal mythologies of birth, transfiguration, and constructed identity. Islands, markers, and symbols are recurring motifs. Ritual and performativity emerge as points of connection. Sovay Berriman’s practice considers the dynamics of space in relation to power and the potential of fantasy. Working across sculpture, drawing, text and event, individual pieces exist as autonomous object or activity, whilst also reinforcing and extending the space and ideas of others, choreographing an overall experience. Ilana Halperin’s work covers much ground yet at its core is a means to connect our immediate lived experience with the harder-to-comprehend aeons of geological time. Through immersion in various media, she weaves stories into her art that drive scientific fieldwork and laboratory experimentation. Her subject matter is eclectic: often one finds ephemeral islands, petrified raindrops, meteorites and body stone collections alongside celebrations of a shared birthday with an Icelandic volcano, Although Iz Öztat’s work is dependent on the context within which it is produced, she returns to certain subjects: ideological connotations of display, self-reflexivity about the conditions of artistic production, the construction of subjective time maps and genealogies as a way to negotiate historiography. Her process usually begins with archival research and initiated dialogues, which manifests as an animistic quest into the potential of objects and materials in conveying knowledge. Once the idea materializes, she attempts to activate the installation through performative and dialogic encountersLindsay Seers. Michelle Williams Gamaker is an artist integrating performance and film to focus on the experience of individuals who either by their own will or not have been exiled or pushed to the fringes of society. She has completed several videos and installations exploring migratory aesthetics, mental health, and the emotional complexities of capitalism and gender ideology. Her works weave documentary, fiction and video installations.
Info: Curated by Oliver Sumner, Pi Artworks Gallery, 55 Eastcastle Street, London, Duration: 14/4-13/5/17, Days & Hours: Mon-Fri 10:00-18:00, Sat 11:00-18:00, www.piartworks.com
