Great God! This is an awful place at Dürst Britt & Mayhew, The Hague

For Dürst Britt & Mayhew’s 10-Year Anniversary exhibition we have chosen to present two works by each of our sixteen represented artists. The first being a work that has been exhibited in the gallery, at an art fair, in a museum or collaborative show, but to our utmost surprise has not found another home yet. The second work chosen in dialogue with the artist; this can be a work previously exhibited or even never shown before. Thus the exhibition weaves together the past, present and a glimpse of possible future developments.

The title of the show, ‘Great God! This is an awful place’, is an exclamation of the explorer Robert Falcon Scott, when he discovered he was not the first to set foot on the geographical South Pole, but that Roald Amundsen had beaten him to it. For us it serves as a nod to the ups and downs of running a gallery, and to the uncertainties involved in being an artist. We salute all the amazing artists who have stuck with us for the past ten years and whose artistic practices have set light not only to our path, but to the paths of so many others all over the world, who have had the opportunity to encounter their works.

The exhibition shows the multifaceted interests we have. We have never aimed to focus solely on specific themes or techniques within the gallery. We do like our artists to master the techniques they employ and for them to work from a conceptually sound framework. Nevertheless human lives are kaleidoscopic, emotional, often non-rational. To be able to share a multitude of voices brings energy and dynamic to our endeavors. Bringing different tones of voice together within an exhibition is the most intriguing and satisfying part of our job. First and foremost we like to think of ourselves as exhibition makers, both in the gallery, at art fairs and other platforms. The longterm collaboration with our artists and conveying their stories to audiences all over the globe comes as a close second.

Next to our artists, and the two estates represented by the gallery, we would like to extend our gratitude to our collectors, to the curators and museums who have worked with our artists, the critics who have featured our shows, the writers who have written texts for our hand-outs, our graphic designer Chantal Hendriksen, who has been creating our hand-outs since the start of the gallery, our regular photographers Gert Jan van Rooij and Maarten Nauw, our main framer Menno Schut & his team at Anyframe, Marjan de Visser, Annelies van Bekkum and Anja Buuron for their restoration skills, the various people assisting us with installations (special shout out to Sjuul Joossen and Jordan Herregraven), the Mondriaan Fund, Fonds Kwadraat and various Dutch embassies for their financial support, and last but not least our trusted gallery assistant Robert Bekman – and all our previous assistants and interns.

The exhibition is accompanied by a specially commissioned essay by art historian Bertus Pieters, which you can read here.