LONDON.-Following the highly acclaimed
East Wing opening night in January 2008, the collection celebrates its first anniversary with a re-launch party on 13th February 2009 presenting a rich and varied performance programme. This exclusive and innovative evening offers visitors the opportunity to interact with the exhibition at a new level and enjoy performances in often unconventional ways. The event opens to the public from 6-8pm followed by an invitation only champagne reception from 8-11.30pm.
The Courtauld becomes a vibrant multi-media performance stage providing an opportunity to exhibit new works or re-develop existing ones. Dr Deborah Swallow, Director of The Courtauld said "This East Wing Collection, like its predecessors, is a strong expression of the active engagement our students have with the wider art world and reinforces the important link between art objects and the study of art history. This special event highlights the importance of performance in contemporary art culture and promises to be a key event."
An important step in the evolution of contemporary artist-viewer interaction in London’s art scene, the evening promises to be exciting and will leave the visitor enriched and invigorated.
Amelia Whitelaw’s dough sculpture seeps at various speeds through a 50 feet labyrinth of inorganic nets and chains suspended on the back stairwell exploring the fragile balance between life and death, stability and flux, creating soft contours on its constantly evolving downward path. Returning to the East Wing Collection VIII, green bean dance engage with the language and emotions of the history of dance and re-construct new dialogues with youthful energy and un-timid vivacity.
World-renowned Miltos Manetas continues the large-scale internet paintings he began on the opening night in which he records various growing and changing websites using traditional oil on canvas to capture objects that surround him: cables, computer screens and websites, alongside figurative images, transforming a room of
The Courtauld into an artist’s studio. The works are in continuous progress depicting constantly changing and updating technology. Shelley Rae’s provocative video installations transform another two rooms creating an atmosphere where viewers become participants in the work rather than impartial observers. Exploring the concept of memory and past events, Rae’s narratives transform subconscious memory into symbolic moving images and atmospheres.
Troy Banarzi combines classical techniques with sound-art and electronica. On approaching The Courtauld’s external arches visitors will be greeted by an audio installation of The Missing. Accompanied by a choir, it is a rich hypnotic dreamscape that pays homage to invisible London, the passing of time, missing people and the ethereal voices of parallel and hidden worlds. Dzifa Benson’s entirely new work produced specifically for East Wing is a continuous, creative process with a series of performances incorporating poetry, music and projected images that create multi-sensory experiences for the viewer. It is an activity of transformation that develops and changes with each performance of the exhibition.
Rebecca Birch re-presents Happisburgh, her successful interactive drawing conversation, highlighting the dramatic effects of coastal erosion on residents in Norfolk. Harald Smykla imbues spirited bursts of energy and vibrancy through his beautiful light drawings. Using the walls as blank canvases, his reprojections embellish the architecture with blocks of colored light transforming the space into a magical stage set with notions of time and space, presence and absence recycling and reinvigorating the classic front stairwell.
In the brick-walled refectory, Stephen Walter exhibits The Island: London Series, inspired by the unfolding drama of city life and its “continually shifting cultural identity”. The Island intricately ties the mapping of the city with its historical legacy; the recording of a place over a large timespan complements the theme of the Collection exploring notions of time. The map is geographically accurate, including many of London’s main roads and historical landmarks, but on closer inspection it has a unique identity fashioned by the artist’s idiosyncratic semiotics, which are wittily juxtaposed with the familiar everyday signage used in maps and public spaces.
By moving through the building the viewer will be transported from reality to fantasy and back to transience. Time and time again is sponsored by Somerfield Ltd and First Security. As a special re-launch offer, the exhibition catalogue will be sold half price costing only £5 with £1.50 from each sale being donated to Macmillan Cancer Support.
