Event overview
The exhibition asks how do humans and their creations adapt to uncontrollable environmental changes after centuries of ecocide?
Pi Artworks London is pleased to announce Will Nature Make A Man of Me Yet?, the fourth exhibition to come out of the gallery’s ongoing collaboration with the Curating department at Goldsmiths, University of London. Each year Goldsmiths, University of London’s MFA Curating students are invited to propose exhibitions to take place at Pi Artworks London and the curator with the most exciting proposal is invited to realise the exhibition as part of the gallery’s summer season.
Through painting, video, collage, sculpture, performance and installation by Huber & Huber, Manuel Mathieu, Mark Salvatus, Rachel McCrae, Victoria Sin, Omer Even-Paz, and a lecture-performance by Alex Anikina, Will Nature Make A Man of Me Yet? asks how do humans, and their creations, adapt to uncontrollable environmental changes after centuries of ecocide? The exhibition presents a pan-global perspective on the issue of the Anthropocene, a term referring to an era that started when humanity began to have a significant impact on the planet. This is done through exploring gender, capitalism, identity, automation, materiality and the potential for nature’s reincarnation after the crisis.
Huber & Huber’s bubble machine spews black paint against the white gallery floor, alluding to the regulation of creativity by technology. Mark Salvatus’s video installation shows flashes of all the world’s currencies suggesting the blur and meaninglessness of subjective value facilitated by paper money. These works are juxtaposed by a video projection of people climbing up and down a public overpass in Manila, Philippines. Victoria Sin explores consumer culture’s proliferation of images and representations of gender and nature within advance capitalism by creating a forest of larger-than-life plastic banana balloons, which she will inflate in the entrance of the gallery. Rachel McRrae opens up the discussion on environmental detritus as she gathers dust, bits of metal, broken pottery and speculative Roman artifacts from the river Thames, turning them into animated sculptures. Omer Even-Paz creates Frankenstein-ean constructions that mimic cows, rabbits and sparrows out of foil and other disparate materials. Manuel Mathieu’s painting appropriates abstract segments from images of political tensions aggravated by the struggle between the dissolution of the ‘self’ in the environment. Alex Anikina looks into the anthropocentric camera with her video exploration of imaginary lands and the geography of world making.
The exhibition seeks to incite feelings of rage and exhaustion as we witness a new age where artists aren’t able to respond or take control because they are swept up in the current structures of things as much as anybody else. The feeling of frustration and incompetence weaves these artworks together, as the artists visualize the twenty first century’s environmental Armageddon.
Curated by John Kenneth Paranada
Dates & times
Date | Time | Add to calendar |
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25 Aug 2016 |
6:30pm - 10:00pm Private View |
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1 Sep 2016 |
6:30pm - 8:00pm Alex Anikina Lecture Performance |
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8 Sep 2016 |
6:30pm - 8:00pm Artist Talk |
Accessibility
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