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Indepth Arts News:
"Nathan Coley In Galleries 1 and 2"
2008-07-26 until 2008-09-14
de la warr pavilion
Bexhill on Sea, ,
UK United Kingdom
Turner-prize nominee Nathan Coley exhibits a solo show at the De La Warr Pavilion this summer featuring four works new to the UK. Over the past decade, Coley's work has broken down our ideas and perceptions of space and the built environment, exploring our relationship to political borders and limitations, religious frontiers and ideals. His work investigates how these ideas change over time and how we come to understand these ideologies according to different locations, contexts and personal perspectives.
Central to the exhibition is Coley‚s new work, Palace (2008) (pictured) a large-scale sculpture which takes the form of a Western saloon façade. As per a real film set, the 1880's style Western façade is 80% real size, filling most of the space of the Pavilion‚s first floor gallery. Constructed from timber, it has a rough finish and is painted entirely in black emulsion. Five words are partially drilled out of the structure - BELIEF, LAND, LIFE, MIND AND WEALTH. These are the five rights that every human is granted under Islam and yet are also central to the mythology driving the Western film. Palace (2008) is co-commissioned by the De La Warr Pavilion and Haunch of Venison, London and was first seen at the Berlin Biennial earlier this year.
Of the work, Coley comments:
"We all have perceived ideas of what we are entitled to in our everyday lives that our built up by our society, our religion, political climate, family and friends. This is architecture built to be deliberately false, while focusing on two sets of ideas from very different corners of the globe."
Also exhibited are two new light boxes. In What Jackson said to Andy, the text "All Artists are Cowboys or Indians" is, apparently what was said in a conversation between Andy Warhol and Jackson Pollock. Give Up the Good Book, Pick up a Good Gun (2008) takes a phrase from the cheap American Dime novels about the Wild West and puts it in context of the concerns surrounding today's gun culture.
The exhibition also includes selected existing works and developments from previous works, We Must Cultivate Our Garden (2006) will be exhibited on the exterior of the Pavilion‚s west wall and a specially commissioned piece for Bexhill, comprising video portraits of a group of local estate agents answering specific questions posed to them by the artist. This is a reprise of a work What do you think happens to you when you die? (2001) with members of the Muster Kunsterverein who were all brought up in the Catholic Church.
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