Author: Quartair

Drawings from London
kunstenaars: Paul Westcombe, Vasilis Chamam, Nicole Mollet, Duncan Ward en Abbi Torrance

Opening zaterdag 4 april om 17 uur
Tentoonstelling zondag 5 april t/m zondag 19 april 2009
van donderdag t/m zondag 13-17 uur

Curated by Nicole Mollet and Duncan Ward / Island Projects, London

The swamp, in its various metaphors, is the place where human projects run into difficulties. It stands for all that is unproductive, hostile, troubling, stagnant, and obscure. It is inhospitable, sunken and opaque. But ask any naturalist who has studied the habitat and they will tell you that the swamp is in fact constantly changing, rich in diversity, teeming with life. They will tell you that it is also possible to love a swamp.

The swamp is where actions become bogged down, where our best laid plans peter out and come to nothing. It is where the intellect, too, becomes confused, muddied, hopelessly mired. It represents what is unknowable or unattainable, what cannot be grasped.

The unconscious may be envisaged as a swamp, a vast picture store, source of all imagery. This, of course, includes all of our darkest imaginings, all that convention and self-censorship has buried or hidden. Monsters emerge from the swamp.

The swamp tends towards formlessness, is resistant to shapes and structures. Hierarchies dissolve in it. It is a place of undoing and devouring.

The landscape of the swamp is not one to be strolled through; it is not a place for promenades. It is a visceral landscape, it has to be touched, it doesn’t stand back to let itself be admired, it invites being fallen into and appreciated with the whole tumble-tail body. Only up close, on our bellies, can we unpick the secrets of the swamp.

Vasilis Chaman

Nicole Mollet

Abbi Torrance

Paul Westcombe