26 Feb 2014

Michaelis Galleries: (W)hen (O)ceans (M)eet

The exhibition 'When Oceans Meet' is a two-part, themed programme of video and film projections by a group of international artists to be held over the course of six weeks at Michaelis School of Fine Art's Upper Gallery. Featured artists include Vasco Araújo (PT), Jesper Just (DK), Pauline Boudry/Renate Lorenz (CH/DE), Claudia Ulisses (PT), Adrián Paci (AL), Allan Sekula & Noël Burch (US).

Conceived by Nancy Dantas, this programme has been curated as a tentative response to the wider histories and issues prompted by 'Miss Gay Western Cape' and 'Spring Queen', two local beauty pageants currently under the lens of scholars, curators and archivists at Michaelis' Centre for Curating the Archive, the Royal Holloway University of London, Queen Mary University of London and Brown University. The selected works commune with the ideal of resistance that inconspicuously bonds, or which in this artificial arena of projection, willfully approximates society's invisible textile workers and queers, two communities at the centre of these pageants and aforementioned research, as the 'others' of society's hegemonic, body-normalizing, depredating capitalist system.

Works on view will be presented in a two-part programme between February and April of 2014. The first part, titled ' Sex, Leather Jackets & Cigarettes', seeks to engage ideas of difference and resistance, obliquely evoking queer genealogies and untold stories. The second section of works, included under the subtitle 'Unemployed 34 Weeks', will attempt to establish a larger conversation about the working conditions of labourers in an increasingly globalized and consumer-oriented economy and society.

This exhibition is part of the Honours in Curatorship programme run by Michealis School of Fine Art's Centre for Curating the Archive.

Featured works, exhibition dates and times:

Part I: Sex, Leather Jackets & Cigarettes

27 Feb – 1 Mar, 16.00 – 18.30
Vasco Araújo, About Being Different, 2007, video, 18′ 24'
Courtesy of the artist

5 Mar – 8 Mar, 16.00 – 18.30
Jesper Just, A Fine Romance Trilogy (The Sweetest Embrace of All, No Man Is an Island, A Fine Romance), 2004, DVCAM, 15'22'
Courtesy Galleri Nicolai Wallner, Copenhagen

13 Mar – 15 Mar, 16.00 – 18.30
Pauline Boudry/Renate Lorenz, Charming for the revolution, 2009, DVD, 13′
Courtesy Ellen de Bruijne Projects, Amsterdam

Part II: Unemployed 34 Weeks

20 Mar – 22 Mar, 16.00 – 18.30
Claudia Ulisses, Utopia, Mod. 273/99, 1999, video, 4′ 26'
Courtesy of the artist

27 Mar – 29 Mar, 16.00 – 18.30
Adrián Paci, Centro di Permanenza Temporanea, 2007, video, 5′ 30'
Courtesy of the artist and kaufmann repetto, Milan

3 Apr – 5 Apr, 16.00 – 18.30
Allan Sekula & Noël Burch, The Forgotten Space, 2010, digital, 112′
Courtesy of Doc.Eye Film