Klook-Klook
The Travelling Gallery is a mobile art gallery which travels throughout Scotland bringing inspirational contemporary art to both rural and urban communities.Its dual focus is to create highly engaging exhibitions and to provide a unique platform for arts education. Curated with the Gallery’s diverse audience in mind, the exhibitions display high quality works in a range of media and representative of the international arts scene.
The Travelling Gallery is a ‘not for profit’ organisation, Foundation Funded by the Scottish Arts Council and supported by the City of Edinburgh Council.
The Spring 2010 exhibition, Klook-Klook will include a group of artists using sculpture, photography, drawing, painting and film to create works inspired by various human/animal encounters, connections and interactions in art. The artists included are:
Charles Avery – inspired, in part, by his childhood spent on Mull, his ongoing Islanders project describes an imaginary island where the coastal town of Onomatopoeia – once remote outpost, turned boom-town, turned ghost town, turned vulgar theme park -is the gateway through which generations of hunters have passed in search of a mythical being called the Noumenon. Eternally unsuccessful yet eternally hopeful, they return with other novelties such as the one armed snake, to sell, in order to fund their next expedition.
Bestué/Vives – exhibiting film work recently shown at the Venice Biennale, this Spanish duo find humorous ways to explore human progression. Proteo is a project that deals with the transmutations among three essential elements: Animal, Man, Machine. Those take the shape of a horse, a man and a motorcycle, respectively. These transformations are performed by an actor placed outdoors in a unique sequence shot. The actor changes his appearance while drawing up a circular motion movement around the camera.
Tania Kovats – concerned with the experience and understanding of landscape, her work responds to the processes of gradual transformations like erosion, compression and subsistence. Terrestrial worms are decomposers, breaking down plants and returning nutrients to the soil. In his famous last paragraph of The Origin of Species, Darwin refers to the humble earth worm crawling through the damp earth. He pursued his interest through many experiments, aiming to find out about the behaviour of worms. These small sculptures made from worm cast are as homage to the small.
Ashley Nieuwenhuizen - using sculpture, photography, print and performance Ashley explores the relationship between animal and man and the similarities and characteristics we share. My work is the making and unmaking of natural things, of animals and metals forged from the earth. The focus on the ecology of the species, the parallels between animal and man, and arcane rituals and myth contribute toward my understanding of the animal and human realms.
Andrea Roe – examines the nature of human and animal biology, behaviour, communication and interaction. While working with scientists she has become interested in capturing the critical moments of the process of taxidermy, a practice often thought of as macabre or gruesome. Her particular interest lies in the sensory experience of taxidermy which she argues is a mixture of scientific process and artform. She wants to bring this to a wider audience via film, still photography and interactive displays through the use of animatronics.
Edward Summerton – continues to make works of almost pure misdirection; simultaneously invitational with skill of hand, yet isolating with the idea-spasm of a half recognised horror image. These four “paintings” are from a set of works culled from the two classic British Ladybird book series on nature and folk tales. Illustrated by different artists, Summerton has applied the minimum of painting to collage to the two disparate images together, blurring the boundaries of our known world with the mythological environment.
Kirsty Whiten - There is a certain zeal in the way that humans set themselves apart from the rest of nature. To me there is just a continuation, we are animal, we have drives and instincts that always flow just under the surface of civilization. All of the hopes and prayers lavished on these monkeys are the desire of the living to create meaning and continuation; just as with religion. My technique, the level of detail and time spent on rendering surfaces has always been a kind of reverence.
I think of these monkey relics as Darwinian saints and sacrifices, adorned with the futile beauty of trying to reach across the veil.
Education Programme
The Travelling Gallery’s award winning Education Programme aims to expand on the ideas and skills highlighted in the Travelling Gallery exhibitions. This will often involve bringing visiting artists into schools and communities to run full day workshops with groups in each area toured. For further information please see our website or call Jo on 0131 529 3949.
The Tour
The exhibition will tour to the following areas:
1 – 12 March East Dunbartonshire , 15 – 19 March Dumfries and Galloway , 22 – 26 March South Lanarkshire , 5 – 16 April Edinburgh, 26 – 30 April Scottish Borders, 4 – 7 May Moray , 10 – 21 May Highlands , 24 – 28 May East Lothian , 31 May – 4 June Perth and Kinross , 7 – 11 June East Ayrshire and 14 – 18 June Aberdeenshire .
For further information please contact Alison Chisholm, Travelling Gallery Curator on 0131 529 3682 or alison.chisholm@edinburgh.gov.uk