Artists: Liz Craft, Keith Farquhar, Nikolas Gambaroff, Richard Hawkins, Benjamin Lallier, Malene List Thomsen, Sara Mackillop, Stephen Suckale, Stewart Uoo
Exhibition title: True Religion
Curated by: Pentti Monkkonen
Venue: High Art, Arles, France
Date: December 21, 2023 – February 24, 2024
Photography: All images are Courtesy of the artists and High Art, Paris/Arles
Note: Exhibition’s booklet is available here
This building was originally a church, then later used as a stable, and now an art gallery. My idea was to hang an exhibition that made the space back into a church, at least in terms of the works I choose and their placement. It’s a bit like an actor who was once really in a gang playing a gang member in a film. This was once a church and now it plays one in this art exhibit.
Art used to have a more defined relationship with architecture, especially in a place like a church; multiple artworks were installed permanently over long periods of time. Contemporary exhibition spaces usually host an ever-changing series of different shows put up and taken down, much like a theater. The curator of a group show is a bit like the theatrical director assembling a troupe of artworks to perform in some semblance of cohesion to a unifying theme or connection; of course, each artwork stands on its own, each artist usually made the work for a different context.
Here are the statements of the artists in the show about their work:
Liz Craft
– Pentti Monkkonen
