ART CITIES:London-Surreal Science
George Loudon is a London-based retired banker, art collector, and author. He began his collection in the late 1970s, he started with Walter Dahn, Jiri Dokoupil and Jean Michel Basquiat. Loudon has since developed an affinity with a new generation of conceptually based artists. Later he was fascinated by scientific breakthroughs from the Enlightenment to the 19th and early 20th Centuries.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Whitechapel Gallery Archive
The exhibition “Surreal Science-Loudon Collection with Salvatore Arancio” at Whitechapel Gallery presents crafted objects from the Loudon Collection, with the gallery inviting Salvatore Arancio to select and respond to Loudon’s collection. Fascinated by scientific breakthroughs, George Loudon has amassed a renowned and unique collection of curious objects relating to the study and teaching of life sciences. As George Loudon says “After 20 or so years collecting contemporary works by young artists, I noticed in the 1990s that some artists were playing around with science and 19th Century scientific references. While visiting my daughter at Harvard, we saw the extraordinary collection of glass flowers by Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka, which really struck me in terms of what this sort of material could mean. After that, I started seeking out these and other didactic pieces banished to museum and university storerooms because institutions had taken them off display in favor of new technology”. Made by skilled artisans, these objects range from beautifully illustrated books to handmade glass models of sea anemones, life-size papier-mâché botanical models, exquisite magic lantern slides and bisected human skulls. At the intersection of art and science, the objects were originally designed to capture the complex structures of nature. Over time, they have lost their pedagogical function and become open to contemporary reinterpretation. The Whitechapel Gallery has invited Salvatore Arancio, who shares Loudon’s interests in 19th and 20th Century life sciences, to select and respond to the collection in an exhibition that stages the objects in dialogue with the artist’s own works. In making the selection, Arancio and Loudon have moved away from museological display and drawn inspiration from the way Italian nobleman Ferdinando Cospi presented his collection in 16th Century Bologna. Objects on display range from a glass model of a Portugese man o’war jellyfish (Germany, 19th Century) to a boxed collection of seashells (India, 19th Century). Magic lantern slides (France, 19th Century) depict extinct animals whilst plaster anatomical models include a deconstructed male torso (France or Germany, 19th Century) and two medical heads (Ireland, 19th century). They are shown alongside Japanese botanical illustrations (c.1878) and coral specimens (Europe, 19th century). Salvatore Arancio’s work is also displayed, revealing how the Loudon’s Collection of objects work well alongside his work. New and unexpected narratives are created in an original installation that reflects both the extraordinary focus of the collection and the selector’s own practice. The artist’s work on display as part of the exhibition will include: “The Fluorescent Host” (2018) a 2m high ceramic sculpture which stands like a timeless monolith. It plays with the scale of a small, ancient American obsidian hand axe (c. 6000 BC). Inspired by a book in the collection called “Soul Shapes” by Alice Murray Smith (1890), which imagines that souls can be categorised by color and shape, the new film “Dedicated to the Blue Soul” (2018) that combines narration from the text with found educational footage. Sounds from The Focus Group, a project by experimental electronic musician and graphic designer Julian House, fills the space, functioning as a soundtrack to Arancio’s new film “Reactions in Plants and Animals” (2018), which depicts manipulated psychedelic images from a nature documentary.
Info: Whitechapel Gallery, 77-82 Whitechapel High Street, London, Duration: 25/8/18-6/1/19, Days & Hours: Tue-Wed & Fri-Sun 11:00-18:00, Thu 11:00-21:00, www.whitechapelgallery.org
