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Some people believe the Sun used to be yellow at Trafó Gallery

February 3, 2019

Artist: Julia Crabtree, William Evans, Elena Damiani, Rowena Harris, Adrien Missika, Ana Vaz

Exhibition title: Some people believe the Sun used to be yellow

Curated by: Soós Borbála

Venue: Trafó Gallery, Budapest, Hungary

Date: December 15, 2018 – January 27, 2019

Photography: Dávid Biró / all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Trafó Gallery, Budapest

When we look at a beautiful landscape it can hurt sometimes. Maybe we are afraid that it is the last time we are able to glance at it, trying to grasp it too hard… Or perhaps we know that it is actually already not real.

The exhibition transplants us into a fictional landscape. It is a strange, yet familiar place, potentially of the future. Clearly dependent on human interaction, it is a result of complex forces, pre-determined by hybrid histories.

Territories are the relationship between human cohabitation, earth systems and material processes, unfolding in time and across space. In recent history the results of large-scale exploitation linked colonialism, reterritorialisation and restructuring made the relationship and our related histories fragmented and hard to recuperate. These combined with the pressures of capitalism and the needs of industrial production created a circulation of intensities that draw the number of possible outcomes to a shrinking number. With the effects of the ongoing climate change and a sense of a looming disaster of toxic pollution, we have to think about our future in the view of past mistakes.

Take the idea of the ruin, it is something that used to belong to the past, yet increasingly it is becoming part of our future. Our epoch sets in motion reverberations and oscillations that scatter long-established boundaries and opens up a new set of divisions in time and space. Or as Rowena Harris put it in the title of her recent performance lecture: how to go forward if the future and past are not where you would normally find them?

Some people believe the Sun used to be yellow, 2018, exhibition view, Trafó Gallery, Budapest

Julia Crabtree & William Evans: Seep, Swell, Clenched, Wort, Tracts, 2018 (glass, uranium glass, rebar, paper pulp, sausage casing, jesmonite, canvas, dye, pond life). Photo: Dávid Biró

Julia Crabtree & William Evans: Seep, Swell, Clenched, Wort, Tracts, 2018. Detail of the installation (glass, uranium glass, rebar, paper pulp, sausage casing, jesmonite, canvas, dye, pondlife). Photo: Dávid Biró

(From left to right) Rowena Harris: SWRS-1218-55, 2018 (aluminium, unfired clay, jesmonite, soap, drawings on paper); SWRS-1118-17 and SWRS-1118-19, 2018 (digital prints on paper of concrete, bitumen and building debris weathered by the river Thames, 30 x 40 cm each); SWRS-1218-82, 2018 (steel, ceramics, felt, soap, concrete, fabric, library card, conversion book & hand-turned wooden pen from craftsperson, 92 x 86 x 52 cm). Photo: Dávid Biró

Rowena Harris: SWRS-1218-82, 2018 (steel, ceramics, felt, soap, concrete, fabric, library card, conversion book & hand-turned wooden pen from craftsperson, 92 x 86 x 52 cm). Photo: Dávid Biró

Rowena Harris: SWRS-1218-82, 2018. Detail of the installation (steel, ceramics, felt, soap, concrete, fabric, library card, conversion book & hand-turned wooden pen from craftsperson, 92 x 86 x 52 cm). Photo: Dávid Biró

Rowena Harris: SWRS-1218-55, 2018 (aluminium, unfired clay, jesmonite, soap, drawings on paper, 24 x 55 x 19,5 cm). Photo: Dávid Biró

Rowena Harris: SWRS-1118-17 and SWRS-1118-19, 2018 (digital prints on paper of concrete, bitumen and building debris weathered by the river Thames, 30 x 40 cm each). Photo: Dávid Biró

Some people believe the Sun used to be yellow, 2018, exhibition view, Trafó Gallery, Budapest

Adrien Missika: Biosphère 5, 2016 (pewter, plexiglass, nylon, clay, Rose de Jericho). Photo: Dávid Biró

(from left to right) Elena Damiani: South Polar Regions 2; North Polar Regions 2; The World 5 – From The Victory Atlas Series, 2018 (collages on Kawanaka paper, 77.4 x 62.6 cm and 62.6 x 77.4 cm). Photo: Dávid Biró