A large-scale installation incarnation of Table Animals (a collaboration between me and Tim Etchells) is in Hamburg this weekend, part of the opening programme of a new Hamburg venue, Theatre of Research (in German: FUNDUS THEATER / Forschungstheater).
Alongside the projection of the four half-hour episodes of the video performance by Tim and me, which were recently commissioned by PACT Zollverein in Essen, the presentation in Hamburg includes four participatory table setups where visitors of all ages can play the Table Animals game alongside the projection.
FUNDUS THEATER çForschungstheater
Sievekingdamm 3 – Platz der Kinderrechte
20535 Hamburg
Artistic Ecologies Every Day: Vlatka Horvat and Marina Naprushkina
at Galerija Nova, Zagreb
Curated by Ana Dević / WHW
9 September – 18 October 2022
Galerija Nova, Teslina 7, Zagreb
Opening reception 9 Sept at 8pm; conversation with the artists and guided tour at 7.30pm
Exhibition documentation here.
From the press release:
Artistic Ecologies Every Day initiates a dialogue between two artists – Vlatka Horvat and Marina Naprushkina – whose distinctive practices bridge practical and speculative, personal and political, artistic and activist sensibilities. Using a wide range of interdisciplinary and collaborative formats, both artists work to reconfigure social and physical limitations in their immediate surroundings. The exhibition brings together their recent and newly produced works across painting, installation, photography and video, including also a workshop framed as part of the project. Artistic Ecologies Every Day refers to “an ecology of practice” that Isabelle Stengers defines as “a tool for thinking through what is happening” – a tool that is “never neutral”. The exhibition approaches artistic ecologies as a process involving actions one does every day. These actions – in the form of small gestures, personal rituals and self-imposed tasks, become provisional tools and strategies relevant for wider communities.
Full press release and more info here.
Table Animals is at PACT Zollverein until 26 June, part of Claiming Common Spaces IV: Cool Down festival of talks, performances and concerts.
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Table Animals by Vlatka Horvat & Tim Etchells is an open-ended game in which two players take turns arranging and rearranging a series of mismatched animal figurines on a small table. At PACT, visitors can play the game themselves or watch Vlatka and Tim play in a 4-episode recorded video performance created especially for PACT.
Tomorrow! Friday, 10 June at 6pm at the ICA London:
I’m convening the opening session of Choreographic Devices – a 3-day symposium developed by Murat Adash, Ofri Cnaani, and Edgar Schmitz, in dialogue with the ICA.
For my session I will be joined by 7 other artists looking at instances of dysfunctional spatial (and social) relations – in art and in life.
With these wonderful people: Augusto Corrieri, Critical Interruptions (Diana Damian Martin & Bojana Janković), Edwina Ashton, Florian Roithmayr, Harun Morrison, Lara Pawson, Rebecca Moss.
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Around Apart Under Behind Through Ahead: A Partial Lexicon of Spatial Dysfunction
(Vlatka Horvat and invited guests)
Focused on rethinking built and social space as an inherently choreographic act, Vlatka Horvat’s A Partial Lexicon of Spatial Dysfunction brings the artist into dialogue with seven invited guests – artists, writers, performance makers – in an event that shifts dynamically between talks, readings, discursive presentations and performative actions. Interrogating the relation between space, objects and human interactions, especially at the point where spatial relations collapse or transform unexpectedly, Horvat’s unruly reflection on the spatial/choreographic in daily life both performs and at the same time elaborates theoretically on the ways in which normative spatial practice might be reordered to create new social, artistic and political possibilities.
Full symposium programme and booking here.
My solo show at PEER closed recently. Thank you to all who visited, and extra thanks to all who left comments in the gallery book – it was really heartening to read.
Here’s the press roundup:
Interviews
Studio International (link) – Vlatka Horvat in conversation with Veronica Simpson
recessed.space (link) – Vlatka Horvat in conversation with Will Jennings
Reviews
artforum (link) – Review (critic’s pick) by Jonah Goldman Kay
Camera Austria (pdf) – Review by Orit Gat
Era Journal (link) – Reviewby Romilly Schulte
Featured lists
Artforum (link): MUST SEE
FAD magazine (link): The top 5 exhibitions by female artists – Micro feature by Tabish Khan
Evening Standard (link): “Culture in London: the faces to watch in 2022 – Visual art” – Feature by Ben Luke
a-n newsletter (link): “This month’s must-see exhibitions and events” – Feature by Ellen Wilkinson
FAD magazine (link): The top 6 art books to read in spring 2022
Evenings with WHW Akademija
Thinking Back to What You Said, Tim Etchells and Vlatka Horvat
Tim and I are in conversation as part of the public programme Evenings with WHW Akademija.
Details below and at this link, where you can also find the Zoom link. Today, Monday, 25 April, 7pm CET / 6pm UK time.
https://akademija.whw.hr/posts/thinking-back-to-what-you-said
The series of public events Evenings with WHW Akademija is continuing with the public online conversation Thinking Back to What You Said in which Tim Etchells and Vlatka Horvat exchange a series of fragmentary reflections on their own practice and that of other artists.
Conceived as a dialogue improvised inside a rule-based structure, the presentation involves the two artists speaking about their own and about each other’s projects, as well as about select works by other artists that continue to inspire or inform their own work. Thinking Back to What You Said is a conversation and an improvised essay, an attempt to speak about art practice in a form born out of it. It’s also a glimpse of the ongoing conversation between Etchells and Horvat, whose occasional collaborations on exhibitions, publications, and other kinds of projects are buttressed by a longstanding and continually evolving shared discourse about processes, art works and their relation to viewers.
The second evening of artist conversations around seeing the city ‘otherwise’.
By Hand on Foot conversations, Part 2
Thursday, 24 March 6-8pm
at PEER
97-99 Hoxton Street, London N1 6QL
with Andy Field & Beckie Darlington, Maria Mahfooz, Rebecca Moss and Graeme Miller.
By Hand, on Foot has been selected a Critics’ Pick on artforum.com. A great review of the show by Jonah Goldman Kay – in the press section here and on artforum.com.
By Hand, on Foot is reviewed in the new issue of Camera Austria. A generous reading of the show by Orit Gat – in the press section – here.
In conjunction with my exhibition at PEER, I have invited seven artists, writers, and performance makers to join me in conversations exploring different ways of encountering, looking at, and imaginatively transforming, the spaces we occupy. The invited artists will each present a work of theirs that in some way speaks to these processes and concerns.
Themes explored in the invited artists’ projects and in my exhibition at PEER – especially the idea of seeing things ‘otherwise’ – will become starting points for the conversations, to reflect on our interaction with the city and its spaces, and consider how we might reimagine our relation to the urban landscape, to nature, and to people and communities.
Part 1: Thursday 10 March, 18:00 – 20:00
with Lucy Joyce, Jemima Yong, Tara Fatehi Irani and Vlatka Horvat
Part 2: Thursday 24 March, 18:00 – 20:00
with Andy Field, Graeme Miller, Lauren Elkin and Maria Mahfooz
Both events will take place at PEER.
Spaces are limited so please book in advance.
Event info and participant bios are here. And Eventbrite booking page is here.
Really enjoyed talking with Veronica Simpson in the early days of my show at PEER. Our conversation was just published on Studio International here.
I could not be more excited to have the physical book in my hands! Advance copies arrived yesterday, with the rest of it due in tomorrow. It is SO pretty (and very chunky!).
Here’s T demonstrating:
It is absolutely not an overstatement to say that I am thrilled to announce that I will have a solo exhibition at PEER London at the start of next year.
Here’s the announcement from PEER’s website:
PEER presents an exhibition of ambitious new works by Vlatka Horvat. Having exhibited extensively across Europe, USA and further afield, this will be her first solo exhibition in London, where she has lived for more than a decade. Horvat’s practice spans sculpture, installation, video and photography, as well as performance, publications and public interventions. Her work often involves gestures of reconfiguring space and the spatial and inherent social relations at play – exploring the precarious relationship between bodies, objects, materials, the built environment, and landscape.
The central element of her exhibition at PEER will be an epic series of 365 A4 works on paper – one produced for every day of 2021. Each is based on a photograph the artist has taken on her daily walk, which she then playfully and radically reimagines using drawing and collage. Titled To See Stars over Mountains, the work will densely occupy the whole of the second gallery space at PEER. The works mirror, amplify, extend, repeat, and morph aspects of the landscape – celebrating the everyday as well as transforming it radically, bringing new eyes and possibilities to urban space.
To See Stars over Mountains will also be presented as an artist book documenting the entire series. The 376-page book, published in collaboration with PEER and Unstable Object, will launch at the opening of the exhibition and will be available to purchase.
Alongside the collages, Horvat will show a new sculptural installation that speaks directly to the street via PEER’s large storefront windows, and a new video produced in 2021.
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So book your calendars!
Vlatka Horvat: By Hand, on Foot
4 February – 2 April 2022
Opening reception and book launch: 3 February 18:00 – 20:00
Head over to PEER for a few more teaser images…
The Domino Effect 2 opened recently at GAEP Gallery in Bucharest. The show is on until 5th February 2022.
This group exhibition brings together 14 works selected by the gallery artists themselves. The gallery invited the artists to choose one work by another artist. With and selected by: Raluca Popa ➟ Sebastian Moldovan ➟ Tania Mouraud ➟ Vlatka Horvat ➟ Felipe Cohen ➟ Ištvan Išt Huzjan ➟ Ignacio Uriarte ➟ Mihai Plătică ➟ Mircea Stănescu ➟ Marilena Preda Sânc ➟ Pavel Brăila ➟ Damir Očko ➟ Răzvan Anton ➟ Radu Cioca.
‘Not Standing in Place’, a project that Tim Etchells and I have been working on for Theater Spektakel festival opened on 18th August in Zurich with a short performance by the two of us.
For the project we invited 14 international artists to propose imaginary monuments in text form, which are manifested as billboards, 3-dimensional constructions, small signs and banners installed across the festival site.
With new works by: Anne Bean, Caroline Bergvall, Season Butler, Tania El Khoury, Sharon Hayes, Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds, David Horvitz, Peter Liversidge, Harun Morrison, Ahmet Öğüt, Katrina Palmer, Dan Perjovschi, Dread Scott, and Schwar zenbach Kompl ex.
Photos of all 14 pieces are in the Projects section here. Link to the project page on the festival site is here.
If you are in Zurich, we have 6 walking tours of all the monuments over the course of the festival – led by two Zurich-based artists; scientist/artist/DJ Yara Dulac Gisler will be doing them in German and performance maker/musician Phil Hayes in English. Guided tours info and schedule is here.
I’m part of this year’s professorial team for WHW Akademija and I’m doing a ‘thing’ on the 17th as part of WHW Akademija’s online event series.
Here’s the blurb:
In Walking Distance, Vlatka Horvat reflects on a series of projects she undertook during Covid lockdowns from spring 2020 to summer 2021. Diverse in form and ranging from drawings, collages and other kinds of works on paper to video, photography and writing – each of these projects begins with an encounter with local landscape which for Horvat becomes a space for exploration of ideas around presence and absence, proximity and distance, mobility and stuckness, memory and projection.
The presentation Walking Distance adopts a collage-like form, interweaving elements of artist talk, fiction, speculative writing and communal viewing to construct a compelling essay on artistic process, the role of place in the organisation of experience, and the interaction between landscape, perception and imagination.
At the heart of Horvat’s works produced during the last fifteen months is a daily practice which stages a negotiation between the ‘infraordinary’ of everyday life and its counterparts in the realm of the fictional, the speculative and the impossible. The projects featuring in Horvat’s presentation all stem from related processes through which the local geography, quotidian urban spaces and experiences of the pandemic are seen, re-seen and ultimately transformed.
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Realized in cooperation with the project Curating in Context, organized by the Academy of Dramatic Art, University of Zagreb, within the Erasmus+ program.
The program is supported by: Kontakt Collection / ERSTE Foundation, Foundation for Arts Initiatives / European Cultural Foundation / City of Zagreb / Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia / Kultura Nova Foundation
Join on Zoom here or you can watch it livestreamed on WHW Akademija’s FB page here.
After endless pandemic-induced recasting and rethinking, Until the Last of Our Labours Is Done is finally happening!
What was in another reality going to be a live durational performance is now a 25-minute film, made with the fabulous team of Hugo Glendinning (cinematography and editing), John Avery (sound design), Alex Fernandes (production) and Karen Christopher, Tim Etchells, Nicki Hobday and Greg Wohead (performers).
A commissioned production of KunstFestSpiele Herrenhausen, the film will be available for streaming on demand from this evening 8pm Europe / 7pm UK until 6th June 2021 at
https://dringeblieben.de/videos/until-the-last-of-our-labours-is-done-vlatka-horvat
Below are some production pics. For more info on the film and some film stills, see the project page here.
My Beginnings Marathon piece is happening today at KANAL – Centre Pompidou in Brussels, part of Brussels, City of Stories.
Beginnings Marathon is a durational performance where we read out loud first pages of books to make a collage of beginnings. We are doing the piece a bit differently this time for obvious reasons… opening it up to contributions from a distance. So in addition to coming to KANAL and reading the first page of a book, people can also contribute to the project by sending in a photo of the first page of a book that’s important to them – on any topic, any genre and in any language. Pages sent in from a distance will be read out loud by a group of multilingual performers at KANAL.
Beginnings Marathon is part of the programme surrounding the final weekend of John M. Armleder’s exhibition It Never Ends.
Page One drawing by Tim Etchells.
More info on Beginnings Marathon at KANAL here.
A new short story of mine is published today in Minor Literatures journal.
You can read it on ML here.
