|
Indepth Arts News:
"Heather & Ivan Morison, Yoshua Okon, Gerry Smith, Gitte Villesen, Zöe Walker"
2005-04-20 until 2005-06-05
Pump House Gallery
London, ,
UK United Kingdom
Human Nature is a group exhibition exploring the relationships between
animal instincts and contemporary social conditioning. Using film,
photography, sculpture, painting, and sound these internationally renowned
artists investigate our reactions to natural landscapes and social
environments, opening up a discussion on what it is to be human.
Through comic dialogue and critical exploration Human Nature asks whether
evolution has corrupted our dependence on natural surroundings and erased
our primitive intuitions.
When contemporary culture is heavily fuelled by
reality television, national surveillance cameras, and fashionable camera
phones, is it possible to still act instinctively, or is our behaviour
defined by where we are and who is watching us?
Exhibiting together for the first time these nine contemporary artists
expose our behavioural tendencies through the enactment of social codes,
deep-rooted animal instincts, and recreational relationships we forge with
nature.
Marcus Coates (UK), known for his animal imitations and community
residencies, presents a new film, Journey to the Lower World (2004). Off the
Grid (2001-2004), a series of large format, performative photographs by
Ellen Lesperance and Jeanine Oleson (USA), make reference to a pre-modern
fantasy land where natural instincts act beyond social expectations. The
Morison's (UK) present a collection of audio interviews in Still Life
(2001-2004), recorded while eavesdropping on hobby enthusiasts, merging
details of natural surroundings with storytelling. Yoshua Okon (Mexico)
reduces the human species to its most primitive components in his satirical
documentary Crabby (2004) which frames two women in a vital fight for food.
Gerry Smith (UK) dramatically reinforces the potential loss of identity
through an enactment of social codes, in his painting A Respectful Silence
(2004). Gitte Villesen, who will represent Denmark in this year's Venice
Biennale, shows Vorbasse Horse Market and Fair (Young One) (1995), an
investigation into how individuals perform the accepted rules of society,
when caught on camera. Zöe Walker's (UK) Somewhere Special (1999), presents
a portable work that questions the emotional short-fallings of idyllic
landscapes. END
Human Nature was curated by MA Creative Curating students at Goldsmiths
College, University of London. This is a new collaboration between Pump
House Gallery and Goldsmiths College.
With generous support from Martinspeed Ltd., Tropic Invest AG and Film and
Video Umbrella
Supported by MA Creative Curating, Goldsmiths College.
Related Links:
| | 
|
