Pawel Althamer: Common Task and
Miroslaw Balka: Topography
Dual exhibitions by the acclaimed Polish artists
12 December 2009 – 7 March 2010 - FREE ADMISSION
Pawel Althamer is considered as one of the most innovative artists of his generation. Merging the traditions of sculpture with radical interventions, he orchestrates situations and events involving communities of people in real time and public places. His highly engaging and often devastatingly simple works translate alternative or parallel realities to the ones we experience in everyday life.
Common Task takes the form of a science-fiction film in real time. Accompanied by members of his local community in Bródno the artist has embarked on an ongoing journey that has taken them from Warsaw to Brazil, Belgium and Africa. The journey continues to Modern Art Oxford where Althamer is transforming the Gallery’s ground floor into a space station and zone for teleportation in which memories of the group’s travels can be shared. The public also will be invited to take part in the journey in Oxford as part of the Common Task.
This is Pawel Althamer’s first solo exhibition in the UK.
Pawel Althamer: Common Task, Installation views Modern Art Oxford, December 2009. Photography by Marcus J. Leith
MIROSLAW BALKA: TOPOGRAPHY
Over the past ten years the acclaimed sculptor Miroslaw Balka has been making concise and moving video works. Topography introduces this compelling and little known work and offers fresh insight into the work of one of the most important artists working today.Miroslaw Balka uses video as a repository of visual and thematic material, extending a sculptural language that is rich in associations with history and his native Poland. The body and its limitations, memory, and the space between looking and knowing are recurring themes.
Coinciding with the artist’s commission for The Unilever Series in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern, Topography is presented as a multi-dimensional installation of image, sound and spatial wanderings.
The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with essays by James E. Young, Professor of English and Judaic Studies, University of Massachusetts, Amherst and Suzanne Cotter, curator of the exhibition.
Organised by Modern Art Oxford, Miroslaw Balka: Topography and Pawel Althamer: Common Task are curated by Suzanne Cotter.
Visitors to the Miroslaw Balka: Topography exhibition, Modern Art Oxford December 2009, Photography by Edmund Blok
Exhibitions supported by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, Warsaw, as part of POLSKA! YEAR, The Henry Moore Foundation, Heineken (Zywiec) and Open Art Projects. Special thanks to LOT Polish Airlines and BAA Heathrow for supporting the Common Task Golden Plane landing at Heathrow on 10 December.