An Object Continues To Do Whatever It Has Been Doing at Billytown

Artists: Jan Kempenaers, Elise Van Mourik, Marius Quee

Exhibition title: An Object Continues To Do Whatever It Has Been Doing

Venue: Billytown, The Hague, The Netherlands

Date: March 15 – April 20, 2019

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Billytown, The Hague

A public sculpture by Marius Quee stands in front of Billytown, and provides the starting point for the exhibition: ‘An object continues to do whatever it has been doing’. Alerting us to the spatial conditions which surround it, this large architecturally integrated work has stood in its place since 1991. For this show, we suggest a small shift.

Suggesting a small movement of a large public sculpture requires a sequence of approvals. This minimal intervention in public space has, on the one hand a small effect, and on the other hand, indicates something much larger. The dynamics of how people move through, remain or attach themselves to a space, changes the ‘directional character’ of that space. Use, perception, relations and activities… all shift. The ‘direction’ of the communal space in front of Billytown changes. In other words, a shift of position has many repercussions.

The works of Marius Quee (NL, 1936) are often open, mechanical, moveable structures which display time and duration, and are mechanisms that demonstrate the laws of physics and our own spatial conditions.

Billytown invites Elise van Mourik (NL, 1988) to become part of the exhibition with a re-execution of the work ‘Two-step, 2016 – ongoing’ (a script for repeating motorbikes). The works of Van Mourik reflect on publicness, autonomy and notions of productivity. They often involve research into narrative forms, expanding on the textual qualities in defining objects and spaces, or experimenting with the programmatic or scripted nature of a situation. During the last three years her work has taken the shape of scripts, events, sculptures, performances and scenography.

To expand on the movement of objects Billytown invites Belgian photographer Jan Kempenaers (1968). Since the mid-eighties, Kempenaers has been photographing urban and natural landscapes, architecture, and monuments. His photographs are all in their singular way minute recordings of ‘objects’ moving through time.