Hannah Lipsey and Beth Banks - Reconstructions Friday 27th April - Saturday 26th May 2012
Quarantania features the work of three emerging international artists, Neha Choksi (India), Eva Kotátková (Czech Republic) and Taus Makhacheva (Russia).
The exhibition narrates these artists' personal lives and their social environments in poetic and psychological terms. Everyday objects, rituals, sites and social structures are re-imagined and transformed.
Taus Makhacheva's filmed performances reveal attempts to 'infiltrate' communities through elaborate disguise, from illegal street-racers to rural sheep flock. Though often highly playful in tone, Makhacheva's works pose the question: what are we prepared to do in order to belong?
Neha Choksi's short films, photographs, collage and sculptural works depict scenarios of erasure, exhaustion, detachment and disappearance. Leaf Fall, for example, records a single day's repetitive action of stripping a rural peepul tree of its leaves, save for a single, autumnal sprig.
The work of Eva Kotátková explores the customs and codes of behaviour imposed within our daily lives, from the school classroom to the home. She obsessively transforms these into visually striking – yet functionless – mechanisms and installations, and a myriad of collaged drawings.
The name Quarantania derives from a work by artist Louise Bourgeois, which the artist described as 'growing from the duel between the isolated individual and the shared awareness of the group'.
Quarantania is a John Hansard Gallery exhibition curated by David Thorp, organised in collaboration with temporarycontemporary at Enclave.
