WITH(OUT) is going On The Road...

WITH(OUT) was the great little exhibition curated by Something Human at the Brockspace last December which I both participated in and reviewed (see review here).

Well.... it's going on the road and the curatorial team of Something Human have asked me to prepare it for the journey. In essence it is the entirety of the WITH(OUT) exhibition condensed into a big travelling trunk which will be presented like a theatrical installation. In keeping with the nature of all journeys it will not only take things with it but will inevitably pick other things up along the way.

The trunk and some of its contents (either modified or as presented in the original exhibition) were delivered to me a few days ago. I will start working fully on the project next week and will also be photo and text documenting the process and its challenges both here and on the Something Human WITH(OUT) blog.

In the meantime here is the awesome trunk ....

Baggage Claim rides again...

As noted in the post below Baggage Claim is back, although reduced  to 3 rather than the 10 suitcases originally installed in the Vestry House Museum Garden in 2009.

It is featured in a show called WITH(OUT) which addresses issues of migration and identity in terms of the tension and interplay between the 'within' of the human migrant and the 'without' of the changing physical location and environment.

The show has been put together by a group of 5 young curators each based in a different country and collectively known as Something Human. Reflecting this curatorial internationalism Baggage Claim was found online by a curator living in Singapore who was searching for artists and work that would reflect the thematic subject of the show.  What is also very interesting about this project is that it takes place in a residential house transformed temporarily into a new pop-up gallery space  in Brockley, South London.

It opens on December 30th and I will post up more pics and comment about the whole show later but in the meantime here's a preview of what's in the suitcases. Unfortunately, most of the original exhibition ended up in a skip so the only work that has been exactly replicated is this one:

What is nice about this version of Baggage Claim, however, is that I have been able to incorporate a subsequent exhibition into one of the recreated cases. In 2010 I did an installation called Random Library in which part of my collection of international, and often bi-lingual, poetry books were wrapped in Japanese chiyogami paper.  This obscured the titles of the books so that viewers had to  make selections based on the appeal of the paper the book was wrapped in, rather than a judgement about its content.  These books now fill the second case.

The third case is the Case for Art. All those materials that get carried around from place to place  when you're not sure what's coming next, not sure exactly what you will find there and not sure how much money you're going to have. You may not always use them but it's reassuring to know they are there....