FLIPSIDE is inspired by Ursula le Guin’s essay, The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction. In this essay Le Guin challenges the over-told and exhausted ‘Story of the Ascent of Man the Hero’, that is the narrative of early human survival through male heroism and hunting. Featuring the Belmacz artist Saelia Aparicio.

Lotte Andersen
Saelia Aparicio
Phoebe Cummings
Joel Chan
Kira Freije
Roxanne Jackson
Rebecca Jagoe
Laura Dee Milnes
Lindsey Mendick
Paloma Proudfoot
Kamile Ofoeme
Rosie Reed

Arising from a residency in Chile Hanna Mattes will be part of Wild Within, an exhibition for people to connect with some of the wildest, most remote parts of our planet and their corresponding social and ecological discourses in the heart of London.

Jonathan Baldocks is part of a group show curated by Rafal Zajko and Castor. Bringing together an exciting group of artists who explore ideas of the monument, human touch, folklore and craft within their practices. The exhibition offers a first look at the new space before construction continues throughout the summer.

Jonathan Baldock
Sophie Chamberlain
Zuzanna Czebatul
Zsófia Keresztes
Pawel Matyszewski
Anna Perach
Tom Volkaert
Hanae Wilke
Rafal Zajko

Through dedicated fieldwork and her ability to quasi-inhabit different realities simultaneously, Johanna Magdalena Guggenberger supersedes borders. In her practice, the distinctions between experience, contemplation and creation become fluid. Moments of chance encounters that present themselves on journeys into cultures distinct from her own are pivotal. The everyday and the ordinary reveal stories for the artist to dwell on, she remains a calm observer and not a commentator or a culture-tourist interloper. Speaking the native language, the artist overcomes barriers of communication and becomes immersed; the pieces made are a visual diary.

These memories are visual as well as oral, layered and immanent: some found proto sculptural shapes, fabrics women buy in the local market, the gift of a precious handmade feather, a now antiquated ornament from a saint’s grave. The stories gathered become crystallised in their rendering and manifest once the artist returns to her studio.

Guggenberger looks for the moment when a society is at the precipice of entering late-capitalist modernity and global monotony, about to give up old ways, on the edge, in-between states.

Universal monotony is found inching into the classic ways of living. The town market is the age-old forerunner of the hypermall. The Adan’s call formerly amplified with cupped hands is now transmitted over megaphones, fully electronic. Women’s cloth wrapping and handy work is made obsolete by plastic bags. The shepherd becomes a symbol: the last vestige of nomadic society, now redundant.

In Lebanon, Guggenberger’s search for the craftsmen of donkey saddles became a performance. As this item, out of fashion and out of use, with donkeys now supplanted by cars, becomes a historic and anthropological specimen, the artist turns it into a reflection on passing time. It is used as a catalyst for reverse casting process, forming a sculpture that combines anthropological study and free associative formal power. Cultural sign post are the artist’s building blocks.

The quest for hypothetical situations of ‘what if’ and ‘where am I’ steers the artist’s instinctive choices. Identities are made visible, materiality is a gesture; soft and hard sculptures coexist in her body of work. The sculptures are resting and waiting to perplex the viewer, prompting them to examine unwritten codes. What constitute progress and whose persona is referred to?

Working against certain defined constituencies of Otherness and asymmetric power relations, Johanna Magdalena Guggenberger plays out her own parameters of cultural emancipation looking for a new dialogical narrative of coexistence. Through the artist’s visual reductionism and recasting, identities materialise and societies are de-marginalised in the hope of a more open discourse and the possibilities of potential collaborative futures.

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Johanna Magdalena Guggenberger (b. 1985, Vienna, Austria).

Guggenberger studied Social & Cultural Anthropology, Arabic and Islamic studies in Vienna and Pakistan; and Fine Art at Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna with Pawel Althamer and Julian Goethe. Recent solo show this is (not) the time to (get up and) walk away, Belmacz, London (2017). She has travelled, lived, worked and researched in Austria, Romania, Ukraine, Armenia, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Pakistan, India, Yemen and Bangladesh.

Lumen present 50 interdisciplinary artists including Hanna Mattes who explore the fragility and monumental importance of life on Earth from the darkness of space, and how concepts such as the Overview Effect alter collective perception of ecology.

Belmacz is taking part in GemGenève.

10 May – 13 May 2018

Palexpo, Geneva, Switzerland