A History of Irritated Material
25 February to 2 May 2010
‘A History of Irritated Material’ includes Group Material, Inspection Medical Hermeneutics, Sture Johannesson, Ad Reinhardt, and Lygia Clark, from Object to Event, produced by Suely Rolnik. Activist films from Disobedience, an ongoing video archive will also be shown.
The exhibition samples art’s relation to politics and the archive, using examples from each decade since the Second World War. The archive of the New York artists' collective Group Material has been made available for the very first time to record four of their radical exhibitions from the eighties and early nineties. Sture Johannesson’s Cannabis Gallery from Malmö in the sixties is revived, and the exhibition also includes two installations by Inspection Medical Hermeneutics (a collective from Moscow of the ‘Glasnost’ years), as well as both the abstract and graphic political work of Ad Reinhardt. Significantly, Raven Row has commissioned the translation of part of Suely Rolnik’s compendious research on Lygia Clark, Lygia Clark, from Object to Event, which documents the otherwise invisible culmination of Clark’s life-art project. Sections of this video archive are shown for the first time in English.
Alongside these positions, a selection of activist films from Disobedience, an ongoing video archive is shown within a structure designed by Xabier Salaberría, and political films made by collectives in the UK from the seventies and eighties are screened and discussed in a programme of events during the course of the exhibition.
Usually an archive draws its value from being placed in chronological relation with a past event. What, then, characterises these archives, with their unruly documents that are more concerned with activation in the present? The positions in this exhibition are borderline or subterranean, sitting at the edge of art history, or at the boundary of art proper. The title of the exhibition refers to the charged relationship plotted here between art and psychological and social reality. Art that criticises and confronts problems in the social world, but is also sceptical towards itself, can appear anxious and volatile as well as positively critical.
The exhibition is designed by John Morgan studio, Gorka Eizagirre and Xabier Salaberría, and curated by Lars Bang Larsen, with Petra Bauer, Dan Kidner, Alex Sainsbury, and Marco Scotini.
Artists, activists and filmmakers included in Disobedience at Raven Row are: Atelier d’Architecture Autogérée, Gianfranco Baruchello, Bernadette Corporation, Chto Delat?/What is to be done?, Critical Art Ensemble, Department of Space and Land Reclamation, Dodo Brothers, Etcétera, Marcelo Expósito, Harun Farocki and Andrei Ujica, Alberto Grifi, Grupo de Arte Callejero, Ashley Hunt, Laboratorio di Comunicazione Militante, Park Fiction, Oliver Ressler and Zanny Begg, Mariette Schiltz and Bert Theis, Eyal Sivan, Hito Steyerl, and Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas.
Selected texts
Events
News
Wednesday 31 March 2010
Disobedience, an ongoing video archive
Curated by Marco Scotini; designed by Xabier Salaberría
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Disobedience, an ongoing video archive
Curated by Marco Scotini; designed by Xabier Salaberría
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Disobedience, an ongoing video archive
Curated by Marco Scotini; designed by Xabier Salaberría
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Ad Reinhardt,
10 Screenprints, 1966
Produced by the Wadsworth Atheneum, 64/250
Private collection, London
Exhibition view, Raven Row, 2010
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Ad Reinhardt,
10 Screenprints, 1966
Produced by the Wadsworth Atheneum, 64/250
Private collection, London
Photograph by George Eksts
Ad Reinhardt
10 Screenprints, 1966
Produced by the Wadsworth Atheneum, 64/250
Private collection, London
Covers of Soviet Russia Today, February 1937/ June 1937/ February 1947
London School of Economics Library, London
Exhibition view, Raven Row, 2010
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Mandala
Gorka Eizagirre
Photograph by George Eksts
Lygia Clark, from Object to Event
Produced by Suely Rolnik, 2003–2010
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Inspection Medical Hermeneutics
Amber Room, 1991
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Inspection Medical Hermeneutics
Amber Room, 1991
Photograph by George Eksts
Inspection Medical Hermeneutics
Klinger’s Boxes Cold Reduction, 1991
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Inspection Medical Hermeneutics
Klinger’s Boxes Cold Reduction, 1991
Photograph by George Eksts
Inspection Medical Hermeneutics
Klinger’s Boxes Cold Reduction, 1991
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Inspection Medical Hermeneutics
Klinger’s Boxes Cold Reduction, 1991
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Sture Johannesson and Alexander Baldal
Agent Knallrup with the right to push, II, 1966
Indian ink on paper
Malmö Art Museum
Photograph by George Eksts
Sture Johannesson
Cannabis Gallery ephemera, 1966–69
Photograph by George Eksts
Sture Johannesson
Exhibition view, Raven Row, 2010
Courtesy of the artist
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Sture Johannesson
Poster for Poex 65, 1965
Photograph by George Eksts
Sture Johannesson
Cannabis Gallery posters, 1967
Photograph by George Eksts
Sture Johannesson
A Cut in the Groin
Courtesy of the artist
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Sture Johannesson
Exhibition view, Raven Row, 2010
Courtesy of the artist
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Group Material
Exhibition view, Raven Row, 2010
Courtesy Group Material and Group Material Archives, Fales Library, NYU
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Group Material
Exhibition view, Raven Row, 2010
Courtesy Group Material and Group Material Archives, Fales Library, NYU
Photograph by George Eksts
Group Material
Exhibition view, Raven Row, 2010
Courtesy Group Material and Group Material Archives, Fales Library, NYU
Photograph by George Eksts
Group Material
Exhibition view, Raven Row, 2010
Courtesy Group Material and Group Material Archives, Fales Library, NYU
Photograph by George Eksts
Group Material,
Exhibition view, Raven Row, 2010
Courtesy Group Material and Group Material Archives, Fales Library, NYU
Photograph by George Eksts
Group Material
Exhibition view, Raven Row, 2010
Courtesy Group Material and Group Material Archives, Fales Library, NYU
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Group Material
Exhibition view, Raven Row, 2010
Courtesy Group Material and Group Material Archives, Fales Library, NYU
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Group Material
Exhibition view, Raven Row, 2010
Courtesy Group Material and Group Material Archives, Fales Library, NYU
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Group Material
Exhibition view, Raven Row, 2010
Courtesy Group Material and Group Material Archives, Fales Library, NYU
Photograph by George Eksts