UPCOMING: The Salamander Devours its Tail Twice

The Salamander Devours its Tail Twice is an international group exhibition, curated by Ashley Middleton, featuring works from emerging and established artists.

Aaron Hegert Shallow Learning, 2018

The exhibition includes sculpture, installation, performance, video, photography, painting, and print. The Salamander Devours its Tail Twice, a title inspired by a passage in Fahrenheit 451, expands on the following text:

“The comfortable people want only wax moon faces, poreless, hairless, expressionless. We are living in a time when flowers are trying to live on flowers, instead of growing on good rain and black loam. Even fireworks, for all their prettiness, come from the chemistry of the earth. Yet somehow we think we can grow, feeding on flowers and fireworks, without completing the cycle back to reality.”

The chapter, regarding the conceived annihilation of a cultural system, was a curatorial guide to selecting artists whose work referenced individual sensed experience in today’s political climate, expansion of digital technologies, and sociocultural influences on the self.

The Salamander Devours its Tail Twice features twenty-seven artists figuring out what it means to be human.
Artists include Yambe Tam, Adeline de Monseignat, Chantal Powell, Thomas Kuijpers, Katie Ellen Fields, Alice Irwin, Kawita Vatanajyankur, Thomas Adam, Saskia Fischer, Michelle Gevint, Sarah Howe, Jan Dams, Alexander Glass, Stewart Hardie, Andrew Hart, Aaron Hegert, Stuart Jones, Dominic Till, Victor Seaward, Ashley Middleton, Brett Wallace, Luca Bosani, Patrick Gallagher, Ella Belenky, Seungwon Jung, and Chris Klapper.

Each artist oscillates between self-understanding and cultural expectation. Located somewhere in the middle, they create an extension of themselves, a mirror from which they may better understand their position in the present, relation to the past, and anxieties around the future.

Gallery 46 // 46 Ashfield St, Whitechapel, London E1 2AJ The Salamander Devours its Tail Twice 17th November – 5th December gallery46.co.uk Private View: 17th November 2018, 5 – 9pm

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