Simon Starling exhibition

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Our member Hugh Mayo took some wonderful pictures at this event. Please take a look.


BCCD has organised a special viewing of the grand exhibition at Kunsthal Charlottenborg, featuring two large-scale works by Simon Starling (born in England in 1967, based in Copenhagen). Members and guests are offered the chance to experience Simon Starling's solo exhibition at Charlottenborg, and to hear Simon explain his thinking behind it. Mark Sladen, Director, Kunsthal Charlottenborg will then lead a guided tour.

"Simon is one of the most significant European artists of his generation, and a master story-teller of a very contemporary kind. The jurors who awarded Simon the Turner Prize in 2005 singled out his “unique ability to create poetics, drawing together a wide range of cultural, political and historical narratives.”

Born in Epsom, England, in 1967, Starling earned a degree in photography at Nottingham Polytechnic in 1990, and finished his studies in 1992 at the Glasgow School of Art. He had his first solo exhibition in 1995, and since then he has had more than 50 solo shows, including exhibitions at Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel (2005), The Power Plant, Toronto (2008), and Museum of Contemporary Art, Hiroshima (2010). His recent group projects include Reality Check, Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen (2008), Altermodern, Tate Modern (2009) and Making Worlds, 53rd Venice Biennale, Venice (2009)."

Simon Starling’s two major works presented at Charlottenborg explore the notion of performance and one – which has been newly commissioned by Charlottenborg – involves a very special puppet play. Simon will talk you through The Expedition (2011), written by the artist and staged with the help of people from the Marionet Teatret in Copenhagen’s ‘Kings Garden’.

The Expedition follows a hapless adventurer as he attempts to get to New York by boat, a journey that is beset by calamities, and on which he meets a variety of characters such as an elusive zebra-striped beast and a sinister submarine. The work is based on four of Starling’s previous pieces – each of which involve building, demolishing and sailing in boats – and which are here combined into a single slapstick narrative complete with a puppet version of the artist.

The exhibition also features an installation, Project for a Masquerade (Hiroshima) (2010-11), which centres on a group of carved Japanese Noh masks that represent the characters in a play. The scenario is based on an ancient Japanese story, Eboshi-ori, but Starling has peopled this tale with figures from a Cold War saga based around the British sculptor Henry Moore and his real and fictional contemporaries – including art collectors, historians and spies.

For more information see: www.kunsthalcharlottenborg.dk/page/view/174

Programme

17:00 Arrive

17:10 Welcome by Mariano A. Davies, President, BCCD

17:15 Talk by Simon Starling

17:45 Tour of Charlottenborg with Mark Sladen

18:30 Wine and networking (Food will not be provided)

19:00 Close

When: 17:00 - 19:00, Thursday 12 January 2012

Where: Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Nyhavn 2, 1051 København

Tickets: Members and guests: 50DKK plus MOMS, Non-members: 100DKK plus MOMS