Urchin Eater
Private View 6 – 8.30pm, 11 November 2008
10 – 16 November 2008
22 – 23 November 2008
Sunbury House, 1 Andrews Street, London E8 4QL
“Why should I copy this out… this sea urchin, why should I try to imitate nature, I might just as well try to trace a perfect circle. What I have to do is utilize as best I can the ideas which objects suggest to me, illuminate them somewhat.” - Pablo Picasso
Urchin Eater consists of the work of five artists who though formally disparate all eschew formal representation, seeking instead to invoke the true make-up of experienced, and consumed, reality.
The work of Peter Fillingham, Maria Georgoula and Ian Whitfield incorporates the extensive use of the archivist and curatorial disciplines. Yet whilst these two professions have an aim of clear presentation at their heart, the artists have no such interest. Instead they use the disciplines to coerce the objects to a greater, conceptual, purpose. Fillingham’s installation combines four works by the artist that are still in progress. Each work carries personal recollections, and questions how one digests objects and invests into them personal narratives. Put together the artist is creating a library of personal memories. Georgoula creates sculptural collages of found or bought objects, objects copied from found objects and information garnered from the Internet. Again, when collated together, they form fantastical narratives that go far beyond the objects themselves. Whitfield’s paintings start with drawn, painted or photographic source images, taken from a substantial personal archive, and move through a sequence of intuitive painterly decisions that have little to do with description or perception. Each piece evidences an enclosed and progressive investigation, the surface taking on the poetics of the textual list.
With special thanks to Yinka Shonibare.
For further information please contact Dan Coopey via dancoopey@hotmail.com
Nauru do you?
A performance by Iorwerth Wallace based on The Nauru Project
at Städelschule, Frankfurt 2008
A
Nauru Factbook
Extract from recording of The Spirit of the Island by Caroline Bird, commissioned for The Nauru Project, performed by Alan Gibbons at the Royal Festival Hall, London
Phosphate, Wealth and Bankruptcy
B
David König co-author of Islands of Dreams and Nightmares
The Island of Ouessant
The Library of Island Literature, Ouessant
CALI, The Association of Island Culture, Art and Literature
The Five Lighthouses
Black Dwarf Sheep
C
Ploumanac'h, Brittany, France ->
Ploumanac'h and the Seven Islands
Pink granite rock formations -> Surrealists
Letter written by Paul Nash to Eileen Agar
Workshop on Creative Writing and Drama, USP Nauru
Have you ever? by Makerita Va'ai
David König of the Cousteau Society is working on a book with marine author Hugo Verlomme entitled 'Îles de rêve et de cauchemar' or 'Islands of dreams and nightmares'. The book contains twenty stories about the small islands that are at the heart of great myths and epic visions.
Pitcairn: How a heavenly vision transforms into a nightmare. Fleeing the English admiralty, the mutinous people of the Bounty settle on this island where Madness and Death await them.
Nuku Hiva: The strange tale of Joseph Kabris, a young privateer, initiated to the Polynesian rites, turned cannibal and tattooed, brought back by force to Europe where he is exhibited like a curiosity ; Napoleon’s spy.
Sun and Moon Islands, Bolivia: According to the legend, the sun shone for the first time above the Lake Titicaca Islands. Living place of the primitive couple who founded the Inca civilization, place of pilgrimage; vestals, shrines with golden walls. These islands played a crucial role in Andean cosmology and kindled the conquistadors’ dreams.
