Images by @mr.plala
Silver Sehnsucht a contemporary art takeover of a 50,000 square foot Silver Building in London’s Docklands will be the experimental B-side response to the annual Frieze Art Fair. Bringing together 12 artists from 6 countries, the free to the public exhibition Silver Sehnsucht will fill the poetically empty rooms of the building with a multi-sensorial, immersive experience of sound, video, installation, performance and events, weeks before the Brutalist block is transformed into a working space for artists and makers in a project being undertaken by Nick Hartwright and the GLA. The exhibition is set at a provocative time: the post-industrial spaces that surround the Silver Building are on the verge of a major transformation, an impending regeneration that strikes at the heart of the idea behind Silver Sehnsucht:
Video+concept @jhenyfy_muller/ video graphics @maurobonillo
“Sometimes you can be nostalgic for what is yet to come. A strange feeling of longing for a future yet unknown. This exhibition aims to critically reflect on both the odd merging of past, present and future that the German word Sehnsucht connotes, as well as the ways these are reflected in the show’s surrounding area itself. Silver Sehnsucht explores the bittersweet feeling which emerges from the increasing speed of contemporary world, the feeling of loss for something unknown in the anxious process of ushering in something new”
, explains the curators Mara-Johanna Kolmel, Silvana Lagos and Rafael Schacter from the collective Approved by Pablo in their curatorial statement.
While visiting the sight, audiences will be able to wander the building’s dilapidated spaces to find works by exciting emerging and established artists. Against the impressive backdrop view of London’s Docklands and the River Thames, Rosana Antoli’s site-specific installation made from rubber hose pervades the space like a pulsating drawing in three-dimensional space. The specter of the rubber producing industrialist S.W. Silver, whom Silvertown is named after, also haunts the immersive installation by the collective Matterlurgy. Their installation reassembles industrial materials from the surrounding area to construct a speculative landscape that foregrounds present day geopolitics and industrial histories.
The colonial history of Silvertown is equally taken up by Peruvian artist Paola Torres Núñez Del Prado. In her participatory sound installation, hand-made textiles become a powerful emblem exploring gentrification as a softer version of colonialization. Poklong Anading’s work, a series of painted plastic bags whose gold paint will slowly flake and fragment during the period of the exhibition, exposes both the ephemerality of the material realm as much as the vulnerability of capital. The shimmering sensations induced by Anading’s installation reappear in the seductive video collage by artistWilliam Mackrell. Reverberating in the backdrop view of Canary Wharf’s constellation of financial power, his work amplifies the all-consuming desires and illusions of capitalism that drives the body to inescapable exhaustion. Likewise, the American artist Christine Sun Kim, who has been deaf since birth, exposes the way that past actions are molded and altered through processes of translation, be that of a literal or metaphoric kind.
As a whole, however, all the artists within Silver Sehnsucht aim to interrogate a particular feeling of ambivalence, to uncover the fragments of past actions, the residues of present longing, and the dizzily flickering futures that exist within all spaces and times.
As explained by A(by)P Creative Director Rafael Schacter:
“A unique opportunity arose to work with Nick Hartwright and the team from The Silver Building to create Silver Sehnsucht. It is a natural progression for A(by)P following our three successful exhibitions at Somerset House, Futurismo Ancestral, Mapping The City and Venturing Beyond: Whilst the space could not be more aesthetically different from Somerset House, it contains the same scale and grandeur, albeit of an almost opposite type. The project thus enabled us to continue to create accessible yet critical works for all to experience and enjoy, along with providing a platform for the team of artists we work alongside.”
Silver Sehnsucht at The Silver Building Dock Road – E16 2AB
Open 30th September to 8th October 2017 (excluding 2nd / 3rd October)
11am – 6pm or by appointment. More Details www.a-by-p.com
Curated by Approved by Pablo A(by)P are a curatorial collective, a discursive platform, and a performative hub. They are a space in which ideas are formed, tested, and realised in an open, public and horizontal manner.
Since the inception of A(by)P, the collective has realized three major exhibitions, Futurismo Ancestral (2014), Mapping the City (2015) and Venturing Beyond (2016), all undertaken with their partner Somerset House.
About The Artists
Brad Downey
For Downey (b. 1980, Louisville, USA) the norms and regulations of space, be they public or private, acts as a key thread running throughout his practice. Whether in the street or institution his work thus humorously and critically challenges viewers to interrogate the conventions of these locales, initiating discussion about how exactly we should engage with the often-hidden customs of movement that profoundly shape collective habitus. Selected solo and group exhibitions held atStolenspace, London, NUN, Berlin, Cuadro, Dubai, Overcoat Gallery, Moscow, NRW Forum, Dusseldorf, Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Vienna, Somerset House, London, Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki.
www.braddowney.com
Christine Sun Kim
Christine Sun Kim, (b.1980, California, USA) uses the medium of sound in performance and drawing to investigate her relationship with spoken languages and her aural environment. Deaf since birth, her work focuses on the hierarchical structures economy of sound and hearing – restructuring the language systems used to communicate. Selected exhibitions and performances have been held at: White Space, Beijing, Carroll/Fletcher, London, De Appel, Amsterdam, nyMusikk, Oslo, Sound Live Tokyo, Berlin Biennale, Shanghai Biennale and the Museum of Modern Art / PS1, New York.
www.christinesunkim.com
Christopher Stead
Stead (b. Halifax, UK) has lived as a graffiti artist for 20 years. Subversive, playful and highly Foucauldian in his theory, his work evades the dichotomies and polarities regimented by the hegemonic order. By utilizing stigmatized materials and colours often loaded gender associations, ornament and kitsch he disrupts hierarchies and questions the aesthetic of pop and the commodity. Selected group exhibitions held at Proof Gallery, London, Stolen Space, London, Transition Gallery, London, Urban Spree, Berlin, Londonewcastle Project Space, London, Unruly Gallery, Amsterdam, Wayward Gallery, London, Make Your Mark Gallery, Helsinki. With an upcoming solo exhibition at China Heights Gallery, Sydney.
christopherstead.co.uk
James Bridle
Bridle’s (b. 1980, London, UK) work is a systematic investigation into the sinister and complex web of modern network infrastructure, government transparency, and surveillance. He explores how advancements in technology create new ways to represent our current physical reality and affect our predictions for the future. An activist practice positioned at the intersection of art and science, Bridle blurs the boundaries between the simulated and the actual. Selected group and solo exhibitions held at V&A, London, Setup, Utrecht, Onassis Cultural Centre, Athens, C/O, Berlin, Oslo Architecture Triennale, Oslo, Art Science Museum, Singapore, Centre de la photographie, Geneva, Stedelijk Museum Bureau, Amsterdam, Southbank Centre, London.
jamesbridle.com
Jazoo Yang
Yang (b. 1979, Gwangju, South Korea) often distorts public spaces to profound ends. With a mixture of concept-focused art and an intriguing visual palette, Yang’s work revives phenomenological interaction with the emotional agency and efficacy of the environment we inhabit. Her work has focused on gentrification in South Korea and more recently Berlin. Hers is a sensitively considered social practice that recovers the ruptured, relocates the dislocated and breathes soul into the specimen. Selected group and solo exhibitions include Arena 1 gallery, Los Angeles, Street Art Museum, St Petersburg, Bethanien, Berlin, Haikou International Art Festival, China, Gallery Microscope, New York, Space CAN, Beijing, Tangyang Art Center, Xian.
www.jazooyang.com
Khadija Von Zinnenburg Carroll
Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll (b.1980, Melbourne, Australia) explores colonial histories through contemporary art. Her practice involves excavating fragmentary texts, images and sounds and montaging them within films and installations to construct an alternate narrative history. Khadija’s recent work explores the innumerable interpretations that can be assembled from information- its constructive and destructive potential as well as the psychological and temporal effects of confinement, surveillance and uncertainty. Selected group and solo exhibitions include Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Extracity, Antwerp, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge, Platform Gallery, Melbourne, Marrakech Biennale, Morocco, ICA, London.
www.kdja.org
Mark Salvatus
Salvatus (b.1980, Manila, Philippines), an ever-curious archeologist and collector of culture, acknowledges familiar objects and the and the socio-economic politics of everyday life. He unearths the unstable pasts of densely populated areas and assembles renewed presents to question notions of nostalgia, with the urban landscape constituting a stage on which these chance encounters between history and present-day play out. For Salvatus time is a medium and history is malleable. Selected group and solo exhibitions include 5th Odessa Biennale, Ukraine, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Quezon City, Philippines, Alternative Space LOOP, Seoul, Bendigo, Australia, Galerie Nichido, Taipei, Pi Artworks, London.
cargocollective.com/marksalvatus
Matterlurgy (Helena Hunter and Mark Peter Wright)
Matterlurgy is a collaborative project initiated by London based artists Helena Hunter (b.1979, Manchester, UK) and Mark Peter Wright (b.1979, King’s Lynn, UK).Their performance and sound art based practice addresses the discrete entanglements of technologies, humans and nonhumans, specifically how such relations are co-constructed and performed. Selected exhibitions and performances have been held at: ICA, London, The Showroom, London, Arts Catalyst, London, HIAP, Helsinki, mima, Middlesbrough, and Bòlit Contemporary Art Centre, Girona.
www.matterlurgy.tumblr.com / www.markpeterwright.net / www.helenahunter.net
Paola Torres Núñez Del Prado
Paola Torres Núñez Del Prado (b. 1979, Lima, Perú) pushes and blurs the lines between tangible visuality and the formative structures of sound. Torres Núñez Del Prado’s work formulates a new modality of interaction, one that questions the placement of value, and examines the notions of transference, distortion and cross-modality. Selected exhibitions and performances have been held at: Malmö Art Museum, Malmö, Marabouparken, Stockholm, Contemporary Art Museum (MAC) Lima, Andini nel Borgo, Candelo, Hunter College, CUNY, New York.
www.autodios.com
Poklong Anading
Anading (b.1975, Manila, Philippines) has expanded his practice to include process-oriented sculptural installation and thus engage all the senses. A socially conscious observer and collaborative collector, he celebrates the mundane, turning facts and memories into images and objects through the often accidental or ephemeral transmutations of matter. Informed by Arte Povere his unexpected alchemical fusions of plastic with gold form a poetic dialogue between the base and the luxury. Selected group and solo exhibitions include Cross Art Projects, Sydney, Gwangju Biennial, South Korea, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, 8th Jakarta Biennial, Freies Museum, Berlin, Asian Art Museum, San Francisco.
www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/poklong-anading
Rosana Antoli
Rosana Antoli (b. 1981, Alcoi, Spain) seeks to reveal the poetics in our everyday actions. Driven by an interest in the rhythms encountered in architectural spaces and the geographical gestures of the human body, her practice seeks the choreographies that structure our daily lives. Selected solo and group exhibitions have been held at The Ryder, London, Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, BBVA Fundation, Madrid, Centro de Arte Contemporáneo Wilfredo Lam, Havana, Josée Bienvenu Gallery, New York.
www.rosanaantoli.com
William Mackrell
The works by William Mackrell (b.1983, London, UK) present themselves as thoughts and gestures salvaged from the wreckage of saturated and distracted environments. His stage is set in the language of photography but dismantled through turning photography into choreography. Hovering between existing and not being visible, fleeting, shifting, this sense of the temporary comes from his ingested self, growing up in London, where space and people are forever in flux, nothing stays reliable. Selected solo and group exhibitions have been held at The RYDER, London, Krinzinger Projekte, Vienna, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, FOLD Gallery, London, Cuadro Gallery, Dubai, Dundee Contemporary Arts, Scotland.
www.williammackrell.com
