Dates: July 7 – August 19, 2012
Opening: Friday July 6, 19.00 hrs
Location: TENT
Address: Witte de With 50, Rotterdam
Graduation Show Piet Zwart Institute Master Fine Art: A Map of Misreading
Graduating students: Lars Brekke (NO), Edward Clive (UK), Edmund Cook (UK), Catarina de Oliveira (PT), Jane Fawcett (UK), Toon Fibbe (NL), Frode Markhus (NO), Fran Meana (ES), Anouchka Oler (FR), Kirsty Roberts (UK), Deniz Unal (TR)
Curated by Christina Li
The exhibition A Map of Misreading is accompanied by a publication featuring contributions by graduating students and the curator, designed by Julie Peeters and Joris Kritis.
Eleven international artists working across a range of media present their graduation projects and a program of performances. This exhibition, which borrows its title from literary critic Harold Bloom’s book, A Map of Misreading, is an investigation of the genealogy of poetic influence.
Bloom suggested that all poets struggle (consciously or not) with the influences of their precursors. His analysis of poets’ rebellion against the overwhelming presence of respected luminaries and literary works starts from the act of creative (mis-) interpretation or misreading in order to create a productive relationship with texts. For Bloom, influence accrues through the critical misreading one undertakes while striving to translate influence into one’s own work. This graduate exhibition misreads Bloom’s line of thought and further displaces it into the field of contemporary art. Setting aside the dominant revisionist and referential tendencies that have recently emerged, it asks: how does one situate one’s own artistic voice amongst a myriad of influences and sources, both past and present, which are instrumental to one’s own artistic formation?
This exhibition attempts to chart the convergences and bifurcated pathways of these artists, and highlights how both mutual and personal artistic influences shape their artistic realities. In addition to individual artistic investigations informed by personal histories and biographies, events, symbolic structures and mass culture, the graduating Master of Fine Art students at the Piet Zwart Institute share a strong collaborative ethos that could also be interpreted through the lens of Bloom’s thesis.
Lars Brekke’s videos can be seen as research and development of phenomena appearing as inappropriate to the anthropocentric view.
In Edward Clive’s hometown Yeovil, in the southwest of England, the 1930’s Odeon cinema was recently converted into a sofa and bed emporium. Clive is using this co-opted architecture as an organising model to create a set of display units that will house a collection of prop sculptures and un-peopled videos.
Edmund Cook presents a specifically designed installation housing a two-channel video that depicts an unwinnable argument about whether bodies are objects or not and where such boundaries begin.
Catarina de Oliveira’s performance The Chronicles of the Blue Crab is based on written dialogues between two characters, Sasa and Zamani. The Chronicles of the Blue Crab was created (in part) at The Watermill Center – a laboratory for performance (2012).The work will be performed during the opening and throughout the course of the exhibition.
Toon Fibbe’s videos looks at figures from popular history who were marginalized in society for being perceived as different, while this difference propelled them to local fame.
Using the context of the graduation show at TENT to think about her previous encounters with spaces and texts again, Jane Fawcett has produced ergonomic ‘pods’ which will provide the visitor with material to think through these interior readings with her.
By opening up for the unfiltered and direct, and to investigate the possibility of self-deception, projected narratives and alternative realities, Frode Markhus’ paintings attempt to open up for unstable and curious outcomes, and to smuggle the Id-worlds naive desire beyond the Ego override.
Interested in constructing ambiguous narratives that combine and layer found objects, tense personal anecdotes and deliberately inaccurate reading of research material, Fran Meana’s video installation investigates the construction of historical narratives and the questioning of temporal structures.
Since Anouchka Oler’s birth, she has lived in approximately 11.5 different houses that resulted in her attachments to objects that moved with her rather than the homes where she grew up in. Since moving to Rotterdam, she has made and trained a team of sculptures which will appear in the exhibition in a specifically designed space which will evoke a animistic intimacy with these objects.
Kirsty Roberts makes work which explores the possibilities of inhabiting a character; she uses her mother, the idea of a gardener or a renaissance warlord as a mental model for production. Change Partners, a series of modular sculptures made collectively with Rachel Koolen will be used as containers or a set, for a yodeling opera, a radio play, and a fashion launch.
Deniz Unal work comprises a video project starring her mother, entitled Mum Can Clean and a collaborative project entitled Orals; with its most recent incarnation being Orals TV, a 30minute TV show that will be performed during the exhibition period.
EVENTS
July 6, 2012, Friday
19:00 – 22:00 Opening evening at TENT (together with Master Media Design & Communication Graduation Show)
TENT Foyer and Exhibition space:
20:00 “Welcome Dance” by Toon Fibbe and Kirsty Roberts
20:05 ORALS Live – The Opener by Olivia Dunbar and Deniz Unal
TENT Auditorium
21:10 “The Chronicles of the Blue Crab” by Catarina de Oliveira
July 7
TENT Auditorium
17:00 “The Chronicles of the Blue Crab” by Catarina de Oliveira
July 14
TENT Auditorium
17:00 “The Chronicles of the Blue Crab” by Catarina de Oliveira
TENT Exhibition Space
17:30 ORALS TV – Episode 2 Live by Olivia Dunbar and Deniz Unal
July 21
TENT Exhibition Space
17:30 ORALS TV – Episode 3 Live by Deniz Unal
August 19: Finissage
TENT Exhibition Space
Singing the Silent Stars to Bed – Singalong silent film medley by Toon Fibbe and Kirsty Roberts