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Published to accompany the exhibition: the object quality of the problem 1 June – 27 July 2008.
The ‘problem’ is the use of space in Palestine-Israel, a conflict most often explored in the increasingly dominant medium of the moving image. However, this exhibition proposes that the quality of this problem has a strongly sculptural aspect. While the art-works displayed are two-dimensional – film and photography – the exhibition extends the field to three dimensions by exploring the relationship of ‘new media’ (and indeed of news media) to sculptural practice, and of sculpture to current affairs. Can such a tangible medium still have currency in a digital age?
The works in question – by artists Daniel Bauer, Eyal Sivan and Michel Khleifi, Emily Jacir, Lidwien van de Ven, Francis Alys and Yael Bartana - have a common focus on the ground. They are about the soil, about the landscape – its reality and its symbolism - and about the dirt. They are also about passage; about tracing a line, crossing the line, or enforcing a line. They are all, in their different ways, about the interpretation of space. The works may have been shown before, internationally and on occasion also in this country, but never in the context of a sculpture institute where questions of geo-politics might be unexpected. As a centre for the study of sculpture, the Henry Moore Institute continues to interrogate the status of the medium, here exploring how it might bring shape and form to a subject most often represented on a flat screen.
This publication by the Henry Moore contains full details of the works, plus texts by Katrina Brown, Penelope Curtis, Adania Shibli and Eyal Weizman.