Michela De Mattei — Estée Lauder series
ICI London
28 Sept – 6 Nov 2018
Michela De Mattei’s new series of films emerge as a privileged terrain for exploring humans-animal behaviours and consciousness, providing, in this way, the conditions for diverse disciplines to engage with the themes of interspecies communication and relationships. The four video pieces, formatted as Skype conversations between Estée Lauder, a Gloucester-based, Indian-born Myna bird, and Michela De Mattei, are screened together for the first time, in the Project Room of the ICI in London. De Mattei (b.1984, Rome) is definitely able to create an unexpected new space, both playful and telling, in the gaps between fiction and reality, looping together human, animal and technological.
Lawrence Abu Hamdan — Earwitness Theatre
Chisenhale Gallery
21 Sept 2018 – 9 Dec 2018
Chisenhale Gallery presents a research by Lawrence Abu Hamdan (b.1985, Amman) on the construction of memory through sound evidences provided by the survivors of Syrian prisons. ‘Earwitness Inventory’ (2018) is comprised of 95 custom designed and sourced objects all derived from legal cases in which sonic evidence is contested and acoustic memories need to be retrieved. Central to the exhibition is a contained listening room hosting the audio work Saydnaya (the missing 19db) (2017), oscillating between listening to the testimony of former detainees and listening to their reenacted whispers as a form of sonic evidence in itself. ‘Earwitness Theatre’, through its comments on the processes of reconstruction, reveals the complexity of memory and language, and the urgency of human rights and advocacy.
Pierre Huyghe — UUmwelt
Serpentine Gallery
3 Oct – 10 Feb 2019
The French conceptual artist Pierre Huyghe (b. 1962, Paris) transports us to an eerie world where fiction and reality, culture and nature mesh and merge. ‘UUmwelt’ features five large LED screens showing restless impressions of brain activity of a human, thousands of flies, scents and sanded walls exposing the layers of paint from previous exhibitions. The projected images are in a constant process of reconstruction, endlessly modified by external factors as light, temperature and humidity levels, the movements of insects in the gallery, and the gaze of visitors. Huyghe has been able to construct an undetermined space where elements collide, confront and agree each other. As he stated: ‘In a certain way, I construct a play. I don’t want to exhibit something to someone any more. I want to do the reverse: I want to exhibit someone to something.
Strange Days: Memories of the Future
180 The Strand
2 Oct – 9 Dec, 2018
In collaboration with The Vinyl Factory and across the three cavernous concrete floors of The Strand, the video works of 21 acclaimed artists and filmmakers – including Ed Atkins Ryan Trecartin and Wu Tsang – offer an immersive, polyphonic atmosphere. Camille Henrot’s masterpiece ‘Grosse Fatigue’ (2013), for which she won the Silver Lion at the 2013 Venice Biennale, tells us the story of creation through a rapid succession and layering of images; while Pipilotti Rist’s video and sound installation ‘4th Floor To Mildness’ (2016), invites us to stretch out on colourful beds and gaze toward the ceiling at two amoeba-shaped screens. A group of visionary works, a gentle flow of evolving dreams and memories.
Rachel MacLean — Zabludowicz Collection
10 Sept – 20 Dec 2018
Maclean (b.1987, Edinburgh) first exhibited at the Zabludowicz Collection in 2014 with a solo exhibition as part of the Invites programme and now returns for the 2018 Annual Commission show. The exhibition presents three new and recent works: her first VR piece ‘I’m Terribly Sorry’ (2018), ‘Spite Your Face’ (2017) inspired by the Italian folk-tale ‘The Adventures of Pinocchio’; while, presented in the Back Gallery, it is displayed ’Make Me Up’ (2018). An excessive vocabulary of forms and characters, which lead to a carnivalesque yet dark picture of our contemporary politics and culture.
