Gareth Moore: A Burning Bag as a Smoke-Grey Lotus

5 July - 20 September 2015
Saturday 4 July, 16 hrs: Maaike Lauwaerts talks with Gareth Moore + 17 hrs: opening
Location: Hogewal 1-9, The Hague
Open: Wednesday - Sunday, 12-17 hrs
Download exhibition guide (pdf)

Sunday 20 September 2015, 15 hrs: Finissage
See photo album
- 'Arno on Nono', an associative narrative by Arno van Roosmalen about the composer Luigi Nono (maestro of sound ánd silence).
- Performers will be present in the exhibition.

Part of the two-year program Attempts to Read the World (Differently).

By way of exception we announce the following times on which the instruments will be played (all other performances will be unannounced):
Friday 21 August at 15.30 hrs
Wednesday 26 August at 16.00 hrs
Thursday 10 September at 15.00 hrs
Wednesday 16 September at 13.00 hrs

It is not something one might suspect at first sight, but in a surprising and fragmented way the large-scale installation A Burning Bag as a Smoke-Grey Lotus by Gareth Moore describes the course of one full day. Six constructions function as display cases for a collection of sculptural instruments, representing a musical composition written by the arist himself that takes us from sunrise to sunset.

One cage has a base of compacted earth, the other bases are made of sand, carpet, water, cement and roll-on roofing. The cases have large canvas backdrops painted with fish food, rat poison, cuttle fish ink, engine oil, leaves and concrete/tempera. They are the setting for the presentation of the imaginative and funny looking sculptural instruments created by Gareth Moore. The instruments imitate a broad variety of sounds, created by people, nature or objects.

The instruments refer to the various origins of sound: Geophony (sound produced by non-living entities like wind and water), Biophony (sound produced by non-human animals) and Anthrophony (sound produced by humans and the instruments they play). Moore's exhibition invites us to look at these partly recognizable objects in a different way and let them stimulate our imagination with their playful quality and peculiar titles.

The large-scale installation pursues Gareth Moore's ongoing investigation into the physical and symbolic functions and properties of sound. One of these is the healing quality attributed to sound in spiritual movements like yoga and Buddhism.

At a number of specified, but mostly unannounced, times during the opening hours of the exhibition the instruments will be spontaneously played by especially invited performers. Each time of the day corresponds to a specific set of instruments that the performers can play as they wish.

The exhibition is a collaboration with La Loge in Brussels, where the installation was shown in the spring of 2015 in a slightly different form.

Gareth Moore (b. 1975, Matsqui, British Columbia, Canada) has shown at Glasgow International (2014); La Criée (2014); Vancouver Art Gallery (2013); Catriona Jeffries (2013); the CCA Wattis Institute (2008); Witte de With (2008). In 2012 Moore developed a large-scale project for dOCUMENTA 13 in Kassel.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS:
The exhibition is made possible in part by Canada Council for the Arts, British Columbia Arts Council, Mondriaan Fund, Creative Industries Fund NL and the City of The Hague.

PRESS
C Magazine (Canada), winter 2015-2016
Tubelight, September-November 2015 (#96) (in Dutch)
Den Haag Centraal, 11 September 2015
Mister Motley, 6 September 2015 (in Dutch)
Jegens & Tevens, 28 August 2015 (in Dutch)
this is tomorrow, 2 August 2015
Mousse Magazine, 29 July 2015
Metropolis M, June-July 2015 (#3) (in Dutch)

05 Jul '15 - 20 Sep '15
Hogewal 1-9, The Hague
Entrance: free