3 Feb 2012 to 27 May 2012
Hours : Monday-Sunday 10.00-18.00.
BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art
South Shore Road
Gateshead
NE8 3BA
United Kingdom
Europe
T: +44 (0) 191 478 1810
F: +44 (0) 191 440 4944
M:
W: www.balticmill.com
Elizabeth Price creates immersive video installations incorporating digital moving image, text and music. They draw upon existing archives of film, photography and physical collections of art to invent new, apocalyptic narratives.
Human action is rarely directly featured, and the drama is mainly expressed using objects. These stand in for humans, and are used to present institutional contexts and social histories, as well as aspirational desires. Commodity culture is a reoccurring concern, integral to the story in every work. The consumer objects featured are usually redundant or damaged, but they are also acknowledged as complex and determining expressions of our human lives, social relationships and collective ideas.
Alongside recent work the exhibition includes a new video West Hinder, which explores these themes through a ‘ruined cargo’ – a container-ship of new, luxury cars, corrupting in the depths of the Channel. Guiding a descent to the site of the wreck, the video combines motion graphics with a chorus of synthetic voices to reveal the lost cargo as a kind of collective will: a repressed psychic force, emanating from the deep.
ANDREA ZITTEL Lay of My Land
10 February 2012 - 20 May 2012
Andrea Zittel is most closely associated with the remarkable utopian structures she calls ‘Wagon Stations’ which explore what humans need for survival in different ways. Zittel’s projects are deeply rooted in her own daily life and delve into architecture, painting, photography, design, textiles, needlework and cooking. For over two decades her experiments have included dressing in the same home-sewn uniform for months on end, exploring restrictions in living spaces by living on an artificial island and living without measured time.
At the beginning of the last decade Zittel founded A-Z West in the remote Californian desert and began creating the ‘living system’ units in which everyday activities such as sleeping, eating, cooking and socialising could become artistic actions. This exhibition, organised by Magasin 3, Stockholm, focuses on ideas related to A-Z West. It presents work made since 2003 including seven ‘Wagon Stations’ and the specially commissioned Lay of My Land, a sculptural installation in the form of a dramatic topographical figuration of the landscape that surrounds the desert A-Z West site.
Andrea Zittel: Lay of My Land is organised and was originated by Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall where it was presented from September - December 2011. It is curated by Richard Julin, Deputy Director and Chief Curator, Magasin 3, with Andrea Zittel. The exhibition includes the production of a new, large-scale work entitled Lay of My Land and a new publication of the same name.
CURATOR’S TOUR: ANDREA ZITTEL Wednesday 15 February 2012 / 18.30 / FREE Laurence Sillars, BALTIC Chief Curator, will lead a tour of Anrdea Zittel’s exhibition on Level 4 at BALTIC. Pre-booking is essential. Please call 0191 478 1810 or e-mail events@balticmill.com to reserve a place.
ON KAWARA One Million Years
1 March 2012 - 29 April 2012
On Kawara's One Million Years is an epic work of conceptual art. It speaks simply and directly about a subject that is relevant to us all: the passage and marking of time. The monumental 20-volume work is comprised of Past, a typewritten record of the date of every year from 998,031 BC to 1969 AD and future, which accounts for 1996 AD to 1,001,995 AD. Past is dedicated to 'all those who have lived and died' and future is 'for the last one'. Conceived in 1969, live readings of the work have since been performed across the world, with a man and a woman alternating the reading of Past and future dates in numerical order.
This exhibition is an opportunity for you to participate by reading aloud, with hundreds of others, from this landmark work. readings take place continuously in one and a half hour slots, every day. I read happily, without thought, without time or worry. I think about how art has long sought to vanquish time, stretch it, crawl inside it. In One Million Years, Kawara allows us to muse about duration and life. The weeks pass, life goes on, but I keep returning to watch and read. Jerry Saltz, New york magazine To take part and book your slot in advance, e-mail onemillionyears@avfestival.co.uk or book online at avfestival.co.uk
