The Alexia Goethe Gallery is proud to present the first London solo exhibition of artist Sara Haq. The Overland Project is a photographic and filmic installation of works made during a research expedition that was a journey overland from London to Phuket, Thailand, in February and March 2008.
How many of us would love the luxury of slow travel, rather than shooting like a bullet through the air from one country to another? To watch the scenery ebb and flow through villages, towns, cities, peering into the gardens of our international neighbours?
The time constraints of modern life don’t allow most of us to do this, of course. But now we can see a month’s worth of overland travel, from the UK to Thailand, through the eyes of artist and photographer Sara Haq.
Sara’s Overland Project tells the story of her journey through hundreds of towns and cities between the two countries, using trains buses and boats. A large part of the trip was taken on the Trans-Mongolian Express between Moscow and Beijing, revealing startling, and often bleak but stunning, landscapes. The other passengers making the journey also have many a story to tell through Haq’s work.
More than 100 images are on display from Haq’s journey early in 2008, a number are large scale photographs of desolate and unrelenting landscapes . The artist’s presence is subtly reflected in the train windows, marking the stark contrast between the relative warmth and cosiness inside the cabin from the harsh empty planes of the Siberian wilderness. Signs of life and communication are evident in the train tracks, phone lines, satellite dishes, and trucks which unexpectedly infiltrate this remote landscape.
The second part of the exhibition features film and photography. Through a wealth of ever changing contexts, the artist is a stranger amongst strangers. Subjects ranging from chanting illegal immigrants on a deportation route back to China to the crumpled sheets of the cabin cot after a night of meditative insomnia, are captured by the artists inquisitive eye.
The Alexia Goethe Gallery presents this, the first London solo exhibition of artist Sara Haq. Haq met filmmaker Mark Chaplin one month prior to departure and in one week raised £4500 to fund the project. They used photography, film and audio recordings to document and record their experiences, which were shared online through social media (Twitter and a blog) at various points as they travelled.
The project was a mobile think tank on creativity and social change and this is the premise for the resulting body of work on show. Haq is also setting up a business that aims to facilitate and improve intercultural communication using these works as stimulus material for creative and life skills workshops.
“Sara’s Overland Project is founded on and funded by the providential gift of places, stories, photographs and friendship. Sara’s Overland Project, a gift of her travels from London to Moscow, Moscow to Beijing, Beijing to Bangkok is only just the beginning of her longer journey of courageously trusting and embracing a kind of artmaking that is essentially about giving.” Judy Freya Sibayan, 2008, extract from the catalogue essay for The Overland Project exhibition.
The unusual catalogue for this exhibition which includes texts by Richard Dyer (Contemporary Magazine) and John Bird (founder of The Big Issue) doubles as a learning resource exploring subjects ranging from immigration, migration, work, play, intercultural communication to the idea of the artist as entrepreneur. With over 200 images, and an interview with Haq by writer & curator Coline Milliard, the catalogue works as a curated exhibition in a book with some images that will not be included in this exhibition.
