--- Apologies for cross posting ---
Last year I alerted these lists to an exhibition of contempory art using or
inspired by cartographic material. The exhibition was so successful that
the gallery is holding another show at the moment. I haven't been yet, but
was certainly fascinated by the one last year.
England & Co Gallery, 216 Westbourne Grove, London W11 2RH
Gallery hours: 11 to 6, Monday to Saturday
Illustrated catalogue available £6.00 + £1.50 p&p.
Here is the press release.
THE MAP IS NOT THE TERRITORY ii 10 October to 16 November 2002
Maps are accepted as a universal language, with codes of symbols that are
understood world-wide. They are a way of comprehending and dealing with
notions of space, and a method of charting ideas and gathering and ordering
knowledge. We form 'mental maps' of places by processing information in
relation to our own personal perceptions of the environment, while actual
maps provide visual expression of our need to define our physical world and
its boundaries.
These boundaries shift and change: individual cultures and geographic
identities are modified by the increasingly mobile forces of economic,
political and social globalisation. In response, and as a way of dealing
with their own place in the world, artists have become interested in using
the visual language of maps alongside map-making strategies and systems.
This exhibition is the second in a series exploring artists' geographies,
and over thirty artists from Britain and abroad are exhibiting works that
use maps and mapping systems.
In the 1960s and '70s, Minimalist artists used maps, charts and
cartographic methods as a way of establishing order, while Land and
Conceptual artists used maps and photographs to represent their activities.
Works from the 1970s and '80s in this exhibition include Susan Hiller's
series of 'Rough Seas' postcards, works that propose Britain as a thin edge
between land and sea: maps emptied of internal positions. As part of his
'Flexible Geography' project, Michael Druks' photographic series from 1971
depicts worlds and continents made from crushed paper maps. Jugoslav
Vlahovic is showing his famous surrealist photograph of the 1970s, World
Cow, in which the markings on a cow form a world map.
The possibilities of map-making have been stretched by digital technology
which has replaced hand-drawn maps and atlases - it is now easier for
artists to manipulate cartography to create their own new maps. Japanese
artist Satomi Matoba¹s seamless digital manipulations produce a map of a
Japanese British Isles; a map that merges Pearl Harbour with Hiroshima; and
By the Shores of a River - a convincing map of a totally re-made world
withdisturbing juxtapositions. Simon Faithfull has created a reversed world
where the oceans have become the continents, and the land has become the
sea.
Tracey Emin is represented by A War Poem, movingly inscribed across a map
of the Middle East, while Cornelia Parker drops meteorites on maps of towns
in America that share famous place names (such as Paris in Texas), in her
recent series of multiples. Chris Kenny's three-dimensional Street Drawing
series uses map sections of various cities inscribed with the names of
streets that are mounted on pins and placed in arrangements that echo
Mondrian¹s paintings of the last century. Alasdair Currie has mapped John
F. Kennedy's assassination on Lee Harvey Oswald's bed - the presidential
car is tracked through a telescopic sight in an exploration of An
American's Dream.
Jason Wallis-Johnson minutely maps roads and buildings and makes
light-boxes that are like aerial views of cities seen from a plane at
night. In a new work he creates an elegant by-pass through London that
relentlessly sweeps away all in its path. Jonathan Callan has obliterated
and replaced the names on a map of India with calligraphic encrustations of
black silicone; and in another work gouged paper shavings form streams
flowing from a map section of Wales.
Emma Williams has painted a London made from paper maps; the folds and
undulations of the maps forming new views of the city. Joe Scotland and Lee
Birkett both embroider household linen with maps, incorporating found
historic stains and marks. Layla Curtis traces hemispheres, and in
WorldPolitical she subverts the normally trustworthy world map. Adam Dant
mapsShoreditch as a globe; Georgia Russell has literally dissected an A to
Z of London, preserving the resulting shredded structure under a glass
bell-jar; and Alberto Duman makes a descriptive word map of Westbourne
Grove.
....................................><>.....................
Antonio da Cruz (Tinho) [log in to unmask]
Map Curator, Department of Geography, Roxby Building
University of Liverpool, LIVERPOOL L69 7ZT
Telephone: 0151 794 2844 Fax: 0151 794 2866
See the British Archaeological Association web page
http://www.britarch.ac.uk/baa
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