You are here

Our ashes make great fertilizer

City:

Categories:

Exhibition Type:

How many artists: 
15
Date: 
Wednesday, 12 August 2020 to Wednesday, 7 October 2020
Opening: 
Thursday, 13 August 2020 - 4:00pm

‘Dear Esther. I sometimes feel as if I’ve given birth to this island. Somewhere, between the longitude and latitude, a split opened up and it beached remotely here. No matter how hard I correlate, it remains a singularity, an alpha point in my life that refuses all hypothesis. I return each time leaving fresh markers that I hope, in the full glare of my hopelessness, will have blossomed into fresh insight in the interim.’

– Opening dialogue from Dear Esther (2012)

PUBLIC Gallery is pleased to present the group exhibition Our ashes make great fertilizer, curated by Saelia Aparicio and Harminder Judge.

Bringing together a range of works by artists they greatly admire, the exhibition presents ceremonial ceramics, shamanic brandishing sticks, plaster portals, biotech bodies, transcendental neons, mutated sleeping bags and shapeshifting paintings. The selected works all deal with ideas of transformation – such as metamorphosis, rebirth and decay – from the bodily to the spiritual, a subject that pervades and prevails within both their practices.

The title of the exhibition is taken from the indie video game Dear Esther, in which the protagonist finds themselves isolated amongst the wild beauty of the Outer Hebrides, unaware of how they arrived or what purpose the island has for them. Referencing the life of a hermit, Paul’s journey on the road to Damascus, and purgatory before ascension; the protagonist ventures deep into the beauty of the earth before re-emerging anew, climbing to the top of a tower, and jumping off to their death. As they fall however, the ground does not rush up to meet them, instead they transform into a bird and their journey continues.

Aparicio and Judge comment: ‘We hope that when you visit this show, and you look at the work you may also undertake a transformation, that you might become a bird and pass through this world and into another, that you may kiss the floor and cover your lips in soil and feel the oily imprint on your loose, dusty surface. We hope that you may become aware of your own mechanisms – the internal multitudes that gear and fire us into being – allowing you to channel that strain of bacteria that floats through your interior; a cave made of flesh and bone.’

Featured artists: Rebecca Ackroyd, Saelia Aparicio, Huma Bhabha, William Darrell, Shezad Dawood, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Mandy El-Sayegh, Harminder Judge, Temsüyanger Longkumer, Tian Mu, Alex Pain, Anousha Payne, Gulam Rasool Santosh, Tai Shani and Gray Wielebinski.

Telephone: 
+44 208 088 2443
Venue ( Address ): 

91 Middlesex St, London, E1 7DA

Public Gallery , London

Other events from Public Gallery

view
Steph Huang: I will see you when the week ends
04/27/2023 to 05/20/2023
view
Adam Cruces: Chimera
03/22/2023 to 04/15/2023
view
Short-term pleasure, Long-term pain
02/15/2023 to 03/11/2023
view
Adam Farah-Saad: B-SIDES (THE RE-UP / PSYCHOCRUISING FAITHFUL MIX)
01/11/2023 to 02/04/2023

Pages

Related Shows This Week in UK

view
Art and Books Charity Sale at Ben Uri
03/15/2024 to 03/31/2024
view
COME BUILD A BOAT
11/21/2023 to 04/09/2024
view
Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2024
02/23/2024 to 06/02/2024
view
THE HUDSONS, Family Ties
01/31/2024 to 04/14/2024
view
Joe Cheetham
02/29/2024 to 04/06/2024
view
transfeminisms
03/08/2024 to 04/20/2024

Pages