Saturday 1 December to Sunday 10 February
Presentness is Grace: Experiencing the Suspended Moment
Darren Almond (UK), Zeyad Dajani (Palestine), Antony Hall (UK),
Marine Hugonnier (F), Pierre Huyghe (F), Ann Veronica Janssens (B),
Nina Katchadourian (USA), Nikolaj Bendix Skyum Larsen (DK),
Corey McCorkle (USA), Hideyuki Sawayanagi (J)
This international group exhibition explores the possibility of an expanded consciousness of the lived moment. It investigates the suspension of time and our desire to seize the present. Several of the works offer instances of acute awareness of the moment an experience that is often associated with feelings of love or religiosity. Much of the work shares a poetic and often humorous acknowledgement of our frequent failure in the eternal quest for transcendence. Hideyuki Sawayanagi presents installations that dazzle the retina with textual after-images. Antony Halls Occurence features a coffee cup filled with a caffeine-fuelled tempest, as the proverbial bottomless cup endlessly spins. Marine Hugonniers Candle is a plain white taper whose fragrance, when burned, is that of a just-extinguished candle. Marcel Broodthaers 1969 film, La Pluie, forms an historic anchor to the exhibition. The film features the artist writing beneath a torrent of water that washes away the words the very moment he sets them down in ink. An exhibition catalogue, with a text by Martin Herbert, is available in the bookshop.