CONCEPT

 

“A hole in the sky / is open / A hole in the sky / is wider / A hole in the sky / is yours” is the first of the three evenings that the artist collective Thank You Very Much are curating at The Modern Institute, as part of their residency.

Closer to an event rather than an exhibition, “A hole in the sky […]” is an invite to shift perspective and to reconfigure the relationship among indoors and outdoors. As a link between spaces, the hole is not only something generative and productive. A breach could also conduct towards an abyss, revealing the Pirandellian “hole in the paper sky” (Henry IV) or the inconsistency of a fictional reality as in The Truman Show’s deceptive scenography.

But then again, as the title says, “a hole in the sky is yours”, and the choice to assume the risk lays in the visitor’s hands. Maybe the role of the ideal visitor is played by a caterpillar: basically aggregative, metamorphic, soft and colourful – an avant-gardist lepidopteran provided with grit and a desire to know.

The Temporary Office for Curatorial Consulting (TOCC) proposes an exasperation of this explorative dimension, figuring out a passage towards something that not necessary belongs to the realm of the binary logical system. The aim is to push the boundaries of the works’ potentialities forward, to their limits. In this sense, the single projects and their installments are restructured:

changing perspectives, overturning the sense, demystifying and re-sacralising the artistic interventions. The very intimate and sensual body cathedral by Tamara MacArthur is shifted outside; Hannah Reynolds drawings are hung in a small and claustrophobic corridor as if to force a physical contact; the Claire Quilty archive is transformed from physical to digital. Moreover, the surveillance in Peter Basma-Lord’s works is exasperated; the light sculpture by Nick Evans is hung upside down from the ceiling, inviting a change of perspective; Alys Owen’s glow-in-the-dark mushrooms reminds a parallel psychotropic universe; the pillow cigarettes stitched by Caitlin Merrett King permit a cheeky smoke break; the Cool Water fragrance introduced by Clara Ursitti stucks visitors directly, imposing a shared experience.

At the end, the main room is transformed into a dancefloor, a political platform where the self and the community coexist and where the caterpillar could fulfill the metamorphosis, becoming a butterfly.

 

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INSTALLMENT

 

“A hole in the sky / is open / A hole in the sky / is wider / A hole in the sky / is yours”, curated by TYVM, works around a temporary set-up, as a theoretical ground for both the exhibition concept and the installment proposal. A tent is a momentary invasion, a nomadic camp which disintegrates the usual whitecube structure of the gallery splitting different spaces.

Tamara Macarthur’s artworks define a sensual and corporeal entrance: the audience is compelled to almost touch the works to get ahead in the gallery space. Once inside, a blue light within the toilet facility, recalls the anti-drug system, typical of public restrooms. The audience move through TOCC’s office, to then meet Hannah Reynolds private works, hung on soft walls. A fork forces to choose: following one way there is Clare Quilty’s archive, following the other it happens to be in the main room. Here the visitor can smell Cool Water (Clara Ursitti) – spread from above – while lying on big cigarettes (Caitlin Merrett King). Nick Evans’ modernist sculptures give rhythm to the space, sometimes the eyes meet a fluo mushroom (Alys Owen), sometimes they may meet one of Peter Basma-Lord’s useless house alarms.

TOCC identifies a shared criteria for the set-up proposal of the overall exhibition: the conceptual grounds that guide TYVM’s intervention have been pushed to their limits. The concept guidelines are spatially translated: the inside/outside dialectic, the repossession and the reactivation of the space, the institutional critique.

Tamara McArthur’s artworks – thought to be installed in the inside – are placed just in front of the main door. Once inside, visitors find a woman’s torso designed to be hung above the entrance. TOCC’s office becomes as the second step in the visit: the curators are available to answer the public’s questions.  Now the visitor is forced to bend: she enters in a contemplative dimension to come into contact with the almost private language of Hannah Reynolds. If she follows the reflective atmosphere, she ends up being in the transparent dome that contains Clare Quilty’s digital archive: a silent space, devoted to study and research. On the other way, the visitor enters the party: the main room is covered with mirrors on the wall, recalling a famous dance-club in Milano (where Il Colorificio, founder of TOCC, is based). A bar in the very center and a DJ booth to the side define the function of this room: a dance hall. Caitlin Merrett King’s cigarettes are islands where one can take care of him or herself, on the corners mushrooms (Alys Owen) seem to spread psychotropic substances. Hung on the ceiling, Nick Evans’ sculpture redefines the perspective, while being reactivated. Cool Water by Clara Ursitti warms up the atmosphere, disguising the space as a ‘90s dance-club. Peter Basma-Lord’s artworks supervise the party, as monitoring instruments.

Thus, TOCC designs the spaces for “A hole in the sky […]”, pushing the traditional curatorial role over its own boundaries. The topics of demystification and temporary occupation, at the core of TYVM’s intervention, has become powerful and critical instruments in the hands of TOCC: allowing for a multi-layered and a polysemic attitude.