Agency
Anna Atkins
Rudolph Blaschka
Leopold Blaschka
Pablo Bronstein
Adam Broomberg
Oliver Chanarin
Charles Le Brun
Nina Canell
Corrine May Botz
Gerard Byrne
Tacita Dean
Albrecht Durer
Jimmie Durham
Aurélien Froment
Philip Henry Gosse
Laurent Grasso
Thomas Gunfeld
Susan Hiller
Leonardo Da Vinci
Nina Katchadourian
Jeremy Millar
Matt Mullican
Katie Paterson
Jean Painleve
Aura Satz
J. M. W. Turner
Richard Wentworth
Brian Dillon
Art and the Pleasures of Knowing. A startling exhibition that moves wittily, sometimes mysteriously, between contemporary art, anatomy, Old Master drawings, the history of criminology, Cold War secrets, the origins of museums and voyeurism in everyday life.
Curated by Brian Dillon and organised in collaboration with Turner Contemporary, Margate, in
association with New York art and culture magazine Cabinet.
Curiosity: Art and the Pleasures of Knowing is a startling exhibition that moves wittily, sometimes
mysteriously, between contemporary art, anatomy, Old Master drawings, the history of criminology,
Cold War secrets, the origins of museums and voyeurism in everyday life. Taking as a starting point the
cabinets of curiosities that flourished throughout Europe in the 17th century, Curiosity is a detailed and
spectacular meditation on the nature of wonder, fascination and inquiry. Turner Contemporary architect
David Chipperfield conceived the design for the exhibition’s initial showing in Margate, and Curiosity is
set to tour to Norwich and Amsterdam.
Like its ancestor the Wunderkammer, this exhibition happily juxtaposes past and present, to create a
picture of knowledge and invention that is encyclopedic but highly eccentric. Contemporary works
include Nina Katchadourian’s sly and hilarious photographs made on long-haul flights: the artist
disappears into the aircraft toilet and, using materials to hand, photographs herself in the costumes and
poses of seventeenth-century Flemish portraiture. Back in her seat, she composes landscapes and
animal studies out of in-flight magazines and meals. Attention and concentration are recurrent themes
of the exhibition: under hypnosis, Matt Mullican videos himself becoming deeply interested in his own
shoe and other objects. Tacita Dean films the artist Claes Oldenburg in his studio as he cleans the
objects on his bookshelves. Katie Paterson invites us to pore over identical images of darkness
sourced from observatories all around the world, and prepares a fragment of meteorite that will be
taken into orbit by the European Space Agency in 2014, becoming the subject of live webcast lessons
in astrophysics. Gerard Byrne films and photographs the territory around Loch Ness, and produces a
compelling map of the frontiers between art, science and fantasy.
Visitors to Curiosity will encounter such recent works among an intriguing array of historical artefacts.
Curiosity can coax us too into seeing things that are not exactly there: a collection of ravishingly
patterned and coloured stones that belonged to the Surrealist writer Roger Caillois is part of the long
tradition of artists projecting their visions onto the natural world. The German glassmakers Leopold and
Rudolph Blaschka did not call themselves artists, but in the late nineteenth century they produced an
astonishing array of exquisitely detailed models of aquatic creatures: still used as teaching aids, they
hover somewhere between works of art and scientific specimens. But curiosity has a less alluring
history too; the Centre for Land Use Interpretation, a scholarly-artistic institute based in Los Angeles,
will exhibit a series of Rolodexes and index cards that once belonged to the US nuclear facility at Los
Alamos: bearing the names and addresses of contractors hired by the government, they attest to an era
of intense military-industrial secrecy.
Curiosity is a venerable subject that has long been a theme for artists as much as scientists,
philosophers and writers. This exhibition includes three examples of Leonardo’s drawings of emblems,
puzzles and curious objects; Dürer’s celebrated woodcut of a rhinoceros, of 1515; and Nicholas
Maes’s Eavesdropper: his 1655 painting of a scene of domestic spying. But curiosity is also a
compelling topic today, perhaps especially in the era of the Internet when it seems that there has never
been so much knowledge available, but also that we have never been so easily distracted. Curiosity is
an exploration of the ambiguous history and present meaning of wonder, attention and the urge to
know. It shuttles engagingly between rigour and intuition, and asks us to focus on objects, images and
ideas at vastly different scales: from the microscopic through the bodily to the cosmic and infinite. The
exhibition – developed and mounted in association with Cabinet magazine and Turner Contemporary –
is accompanied by a suitably playful, and informative book that includes essays by Marina Warner and
Brian Dillon.
Brian Dillon, curator, said:
“Curiosity is the desire to uncover what lies beyond our present understanding of the world. Alongside
wonder, which was traditionally considered the origin of philosophy, curiosity is valued because it leads
us into new territories. But historically it has been condemned too as a form of distraction, an attraction
to novelty for its own sake or a desire to unveil what is actually none of our business. Like the cabinet of
curiosities, which mixed science and art, ancient and modern, reality and fiction, this exhibition refuses
to choose between knowledge and pleasure. It juxtaposes historical periods and categories of objects
to produce an eccentric map of curiosity in its many senses.”Victoria Pomery, Director of Turner Contemporary, said:
‘Artists’ curiosity about the world and how it informs their artistic production is at the heart of this
exhibition. The show brings together a wealth of wonderful artefacts and artworks by leading historical
and contemporary artists. The opportunity to see such an extensive range of material allows visitors to
think more about the role that curiosity plays in all our lives.’
Curiosity: Art and the Pleasures of Knowing includes work by Agency, Anna Atkins, Rudolph and
Leopold Blaschka, Pablo Bronstein, Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin, Charles Le Brun, Nina
Canell, the Centre for Land Use Interpretation, Corrine May Botz, Gerard Byrne, Tacita Dean, Albrecht
Dürer, Jimmie Durham, Aurélien Froment, Philip Henry Gosse, Laurent Grasso, Thomas Grünfeld,
Susan Hiller, Leonardo Da Vinci, Nina Katchadourian, Jeremy Millar, Matt Mullican, Katie Paterson,
Jean Painlevé, Aura Satz, J. M. W. Turner and Richard Wentworth.
Historical artefacts include: the mineral collection of Roger Caillois from the Natural History Museum in
Paris, a scrying mirror and crystal reputed to have belonged to John Dee, a cabinet bought the diarist
John Evelyn by his wife in 1652, ivory anatomical models from the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, Robert Hooke’s Micrographia with its startlingly detailed illustration of a flea, and a penguin
collected by Ernest Shackleton’s Antarctic expedition.
For further PRESS information please contact Holly Blaxill: holly.blaxill@southbankcentre.co.uk
or on 020 7921 0672
press preview Thursday 23 May 11.30am
RSVP to Monique Kent atmkent@turnercontemporary.org
Opening 25 may
Turner Contemporary
The Rendezvous, Margate
Open Tuesday to Sunday and bank holidays 10am-6pm.
Open until 10pm once a month for Late Night Live.
Free Admission