Published by Motto Books

Catalogue of Theodora Allen’s solo exhibition Saturnine
Kunsthal Aarhus
14.05–18.07.2021

On a summer evening in July 1610, under the humid Padua sky, Galileo peered through his crude telescope to discover the rings of Saturn, the furthest planet then known. While Galileo set his sight on Saturn, it came into view slowly. Ancient Greek and Roman theory, and later medieval psychology, had correlated four planets with each of the elements and temporal ‘humours’; Jupiter’s persuasion prevailed in the blood and affected a sanguine nature; Mars ruled aggression; the moon was cause for an apathetic disposition. The fourth and final humour, inspired by ringed Saturn, was responsible for melancholy. It is for this reason we have the term ‘saturnine’ to describe sadness. The sight of Saturn is one of sorrow.

Kunsthal Aarhus presents Saturnine, the first institutional solo exhibition of Los Angeles-based contemporary artist Theodora Allen. Interweaving the artist’s emblematic use of symbols, the exhibition engages with a history of Saturn, the celestial body said to have been the cause of a melancholic disposition – from ancient myth and the Middle Ages through to the present. At times appearing as itself, a large ringed orb, and at others as affect, the figure of the planet joins Allen’s representations of recurrent motifs that are informed by cultural and emotional influence.

Alongside Saturn, depictions of markers such as serpents, wildfires, moths, hourglasses and hallucinogenic plants present a language that is seen rather than uttered. Within the emblematic tradition – a form positioned squarely between visual arts and literature, grappling equally with both image and text – Allen’s compositions exist as propositions of impossibilities. As concepts, they transport the viewer elsewhere: into different times, different narratives. Steeped in mythmaking and iconography, the paintings are resonant with the visionary work of poets and painters in early Symbolist graphic arts, as well as resurgences of this aesthetic in the zeitgeist of 1970s California, addressing cyclical, enduring themes of human versus nature that withstand in our contemporary moment.

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In the exhibition “The scene in which I find myself / Or, where does my body belong” Ruth Buchanan presented 50 years of collecting at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, Aotearoa New Zealand. This show had one core question: where is power centered? Through asking this question Buchanan and the institution have encountered celebratory moments of risk and experimentation and at the same time come face-to-face with the ways in which individual perspectives are encoded into institutions, and society at large, to form what is recognised as important and valuable. The project has made visible what Audre Lorde describes as the problem of the “mythic norm”. The symposium, “Uneven Bodies” acted on the imbalances exposed in the exhibition and invited discussions on considered approaches that weave in and out of the institution in order to re calibrate the ways in which we produce, engage with, and can shape collections. The content is gathered together in its entirety for this reader and acts as a transcript of a live event and holds onto that liveliness through the variety of forms and tones taken in each of the papers. At the same time, each contribution offers in its own way a template for how we can imagine collecting for the future; full of powerful languages we still need to learn how to speak, together.

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New Public School in Jerusalem – Under the Mountain 2011-2013. Omer Krieger. Public School Editions.

New Public Art in Jerusalem documents selected moments and actions that took place during the Under the Mountain Festival from 2011-2013, with Omer Krieger as artistic director.

The book, which was published by the Jerusalem Season of Culture in collaboration with the graphic design studio Public School, was edited by Tea Tupajić, a Croatian theatre director who specializes in critical thinking on performance, institutions and politics. She also edits the Frakcija magazine and participated in Under the Mountain 2013.

The Under the Mountain festival which kicks off again, for the fourth time in July, commissions and hosts artistic works “made of people,” and spans a range of artistic disciplines including: performance art, theatre, dance, video, fine arts, music, sculpture and discourse. Under the Mountain is a popular, expansive and in-depth project which plays out, entirely, in Jerusalem’s public domain—the center of Israel’s political and religious life.

Author: Tea Tupajić (Ed.)
Publisher: Public School Editions
Language: english
Pages: 80
Binding: Softcover
ISBN: 978-965-92283-0-0
€10.00

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Andrew Kerr. Inverleith House, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh.

In 1999, Inverleith House presented an exhibition open to all artists living and working in Scotland, called ‘Absolut Open’. The 29 artists chosen to exhibit were selected from submissions by over 350 artists, spanning several generations and encompassing every artistic medium and style. A few of the artists represented were already well-known at the time, but most were not. One of the strangest and most scuccessfuil works in the exhibition was a cardbopard sculpture made by Andrew Kerr, a young artist who had only just graduated from Glasgow School of Art. It took the form of a ‘cast.’ taken from another sculpture – the Garden’s ‘Slate Cone’ (Andy Goldsworthy, 1990; resting on the gallery floor like an upturned carapace it was positioned so that both could be viewed simultaneously by looking out of a window towards the hawthorn tree near which Goldsworthy’s sculpture was sited.

whilst Kerr’s sculpture appeared temporary, inmprovised and possibly even slightly irreverent, both forms demonstated an affinity with nature and culture respectively. Born in 1977, Kerr is one of the younger members of an internationally recognised generation of artists who have made exhibitions for Inverleith House in recent years, including Karla Black, Douglas Gordon, Jim Lambie, Victoria Morton, Tony Swain, Hayley and Sue tompkins and Cathy Wilkes.

The exhibition will feature new and recent work and is Kerr’s first major museum exhibition in Scotland, following a major solo exhjibition in 2009 at the Kunstverein in Bremerhaven, Germany and other recent solo exhibitions in Cologne and Glasgow.

Catalogue

D € 20

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