If you are interested in contempory art I can recommend a visit to a commercial gallery (England & Co, 216 Westbourne Grove, London W11 2RH) which is currently showing artists who are inspired by or directly use cartographic sources. Even if you're not a fan of contempory art I'm sure you'll find a few pieces that you wouldn't mind putting on your wall.
If you have the opportunity before 1 September, do visit this Exhibition. Indeed, if you walk down to Bayswater tube station you can jump on the Circle line, get off at St Pancras and visit the Lie of the Land at the BL too.
Here is the gallery's press release
THE MAP IS NOT THE TERRITORY
14 July 1 September 2001
The statement 'we need new maps if we are going to make sense of the world'
may seem obvious, but the artist-explorer, creating 'new maps', can take us
on a journey that informs the way that we encounter and translate the world. Works by over thirty artists, ranging from the established to emerging young contemporaries, using maps and mapping both literally and conceptually, reflect the ever increasing globalisation of culture.
The title of the exhibition is taken from a phrase that has become associated with the British artist Ralph Rumney. The book of the same title
by Alan Woods will be available during the exhibition, presenting a figure whose career intersected with the main currents of the post-war European avant-garde. Rumney will be represented by original publications of The Leaning Tower of Venice. This illustrated essay on psychogeography, the theory and practice of drifting through an urban environment, is a Situationist approach to mapping an unplanned wander through the streets of
Venice.
Susan Hiller will be represented by Street Ceremonies, a work made in NorthKensington in 1973 and not previously exhibited. Other works include Cornelia Parker 's multiple Meteorite Lands on Wormwood Scrubs, Chris Kenny's Fetish Map of London, Jo Kent's obsessively inscribed text-maps of Venice, and Adrian Bannon's Island with its affinities to Arte Povera. In Conceptual Relationships No.3, Stephen Willats maps objects on a desk-top to contrast associative realms of meaning. Langlands & Bell's Air Routes of
Britain are 'a mile-high state of permanent flux frozen in time'.
Italy-based Rebecca Forster engraves zinc wall-sculptures with maps inspired by archaeology, and Joanne Berry's Lightbox Drawing charts imaginary galaxies with light. Jane Bush makes collages with maps that exploit the intrinsic beauty of her found materials, while Layla Curtis collages and dissects to create a new hybrid political wall map. Jason Wallis-Johnson re-configures islands and towns using data from population statistics to set them against each other in imaginary conflicts. Allan Mitelman makes delicate interventions and marks on arbitrary sections of maps, and Geoffrey Fisher re-forms maps into geometric structures. Michael Druks uses geography as an international coded language, and Jonathan Callan's punched books are observations on materiality and process.
Microscopic inner worlds are mapped in paint by Peter Bunting; and artist and film-maker Peter Greenaway will be exhibiting four works from his 'A Walk Through H' series in which 'the traveller created the territory as he walked through it'.
Exhibition dates: 14 July to 1 September 2001
Gallery hours: 11 to 6. Monday to Saturday
Illustrated catalogue available £6.00 + £1.50 p&p.
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