ART CITIES: London=Archipelago: Visions in Orbit
With society becoming increasingly fragmented, exacerbated by heightened global geo-political tensions, the exhibition “Archipelago: Visions in Orbit “proposes an ‘archipelagic’ approach, aimed at illuminating a shared cultural fabric, while at the same time allowing for complex differences. Bringing together a diverse range of artists, perspectives and mediums, takes the physiology of a cluster of distinct but connected islands as a metaphor to frame and relate seemingly disparate artistic positions.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Whitechapel Gallery Archive
“Archipelago: Visions in Orbit” is an original exhibition curated by students from the MA Curating Art and Public Programmes course, an one-year professional placement qualification, organised in collaboration with London South Bank University (LSBU). Artworks presented within the exhibition include sculpture, photography and painting, performance documentation and textiles works. Cameron Ugbodu (aka “See You”, is an autodidact Nigerian and Austrian multidisciplinary artist living and working in London. Through their work, Cameron investigates family histories, identity and queerness. Influences and techniques learned from their family’s heritage from Benin City (Edo State, Nigeria) and the Wachau area (Austria) shape Cameron’s practice. Craftsmanship has always been an important part of Cameron’s family, this coupled with difficulty expressing themselves verbally has led Cameron to explore visual expression through different mediums in order to communicate their world to others. On a constant search for oneself, their work archives different stages of their experience and the space surrounding them with a gaze towards the future and exploration. Process-led, Daniella Valz Gen’s work explores poetic experience through different forms of reading, writing, performing and making. They’re invested in a relational and responsive approach to land, place, and the other-than-human. Born in Peru and based in London, Valz Gen’s work highlights the interstices between languages, cultures and value systems as areas where potential new meanings can arise. Esther Teichmann’s practice moves across still and moving image, textiles and painting, creating alternate worlds, which blur autobiography and fiction. Central to the work lies an exploration of the origins of fantasy and desire and how these are bound to experiences of loss and representation. Our relationship to the maternal, home and female pleasure are themes which are returned to through a layering of voices and visual approaches. Within these works of speculative fiction, bodies are indivisible from landscape: caves as mothers, water as mothers, beds as lovers, mouths as homes, seashels as orifices, sisters at every turn. The work is haunted by night dreams and daydreams, of drowning and sleeping. Thinking about our bodies as sites of knowledge production, Teichmann reimagines space and encounters through feminist subjectivity, exploring the relationship between fiction, myth and lived experience. Güler Ateş moved from Turkey to London in 1998, studying first at Lewisham College and then moving on to a BA in Painting at Wimbledon School of Art. Jade de Montserrat was the recipient of the Stuart Hall Foundation Scholarship supporting her PhD and the development of her work from her Black Diasporic perspective in the North of England. de Montserrat works through performance, drawing, painting, film, installation, sculpture, print and text. Jakob Rowlinson lives and works in London. He studied BA Fine Art at The Ruskin School of Art (Oxford University), and MA Sculpture at the Royal College of Art (London). He works across leather masks, embroidery, and jacquard tapestries to weave alternative histories steeped in queer culture, mythology, and nature.
Participating Artists: Cameron Ugbodu, Daniella Valz Gen, Esther Teichmann, Güler Ateş, Jade de Montserrat, Jakob Rowlinson
Photo: Jakob Rowlinson, Mask V (peppered moth), 2022, Leather trainers, rivets, eyelets and shoelaces, courtesy of the artist
Info: Curatorial team: Gözde Altun, Eve Barnes, Molly Clark, Maria Green, Parastoo Jafari, Hannah Lewis, Alessandro Morter, Kuba Ocean, Yasmin Riley, Angela Sanchez-Castrillon, Benjamin Sebastian, Ajahee Sekkm-Miles, Cosima Straub and Hannah Walker, Whitechapel Gallery, 77-82 Whitechapel High St, London, United Kingdom, Duration: 15/8/2024-5/1/2025, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 11:00-18:00, www.whitechapelgallery.org/
