10 July – 8 August 2010
If it were the names of artists, not rockstars, that we scribbled on pencil cases as idealistic youths, somewhere on mine would have been written, “I ♥ Christian Boltanski”.
The French conceptual and installation artist has a decades-long practice that might best be described visually as a sort of mournful poetry in its exploration of memory, absence, loss and suffering. While much of Boltanski’s work is rooted in an awareness of the Holocaust and its social and historical consequences, universally his work is about reclaiming the individual experience within History and Memory and the ultimately ephemeral nature of both life and ‘little M’ memory. The opportunity then to contribute to Boltanski’s latest work proved irresistible.
Until 30 August 2010.
If I wasn’t already falling a little bit in love with the Victoria and Albert Museum after the delight that has been their recent exhibition program, it would be safe to say that the involving, engaging and utterly beautiful 1:1 Architects Build Small Spaces exhibition has stolen my heart completely. So often in looking at art we neglect to acknowledge the space within which we receive it and how this might inform our understanding and appreciation of it. Even ignoring art for a moment, space as a concept can prove elusive when not dealing with the ugly practicalities of wardrobe space or peak hour on the Piccadilly line.
1:1 is an exhibition fundamentally about space – how we move in it, how we feel it and how it shapes our material, intellectual, creative and emotional journeys. It sounds intellectually obtuse. It could not be further from it.