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4/10/2005

Sarah Beddington

University College, London

Panoptiscope

Curated by James Putnam

An extraordinary new installation to illuminate one of the world's greatest collections of Egyptian artefacts, referencing an 18th century surveillance system sited opposite its creator Jeremy Bentham... this is Panoptiscope by Sarah Beddington. Internationally renowned UK artist Sarah Beddington has been commissioned by the UCL Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology to create a new installation, celebrating the imminent re-housing of their collection. Curated by James Putnam, Beddington’s installation Panoptiscope will be an imaginative reflection on the Petrie Museum which holds one of the greatest collections of Egyptian and Sudanese artefacts outside of Egypt. Currently housed in an old stable building, at present it only displays 60% of its estimated 80,000 objects, collected almost entirely by ‘the father of archaeology’ William Flinders Petrie.

In 2008 the Petrie Museum is scheduled to move into the Panopticon – a new building with custom-built galleries, within UCL. The move aims to make the entire collection accessible to the public. Beddington’s Panoptiscope will be incorporated into the new museum premises as a permanent installation. The name of the new structure references Jeremy Bentham’s eighteenth century surveillance system for a model penitentiary, enabling the warder within a surveillance tower to remain invisible to inmates, whilst he would be able to view them at all times. Referencing the Panopticon, Beddington will work with an existing kiosk in the South Cloisters of UCL, appropriately once intended for use by a security guard, situated opposite the ‘auto-icon’ of Jeremy Bentham. While appearing to have the inscrutability of Bentham’s tower on the outside, on close inspection the kiosk will give up its interior secrets in the manner of a pre-cinematic peepshow.

Focusing on one year in Flinders Petrie’s life, Beddington will juxtapose excerpts from his journal of the excavations at Lahun with ant-eaten fragments of ancient Egyptian papyrus texts. Etching these texts into the glass panes of the kiosk she creates a dialogue between an ancient society and its excavator. Beddington uses a variety of media to expose the resonances of different historical layers. By mixing archival material with contemporary footage, she collapses the linear timeline of history, creating an installation that intermingles the distant and not so distant past with contemporary moments.

Editor’s notes:

SARAH BEDDINGTON
With her acute observation and wry humour, Sarah Beddington is one of the most individual new British artists to emerge in the last few years. Her work includes painting, video and installation. Based in London and New York, she has shown extensively in the UK, Europe and the USA. Recent exhibitions include Vanishing Point at the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio, and the internationally touring e-flux Video Rental Store. Her work is in private and public collections in Europe and the USA, including the Arts Council of England.

JAMES PUTNAM
James Putnam began his career as a curator in the British Museum's Department of Egyptian Antiquities and has written many popular books on Egyptology. Since 1994 he has curated projects with major and emerging artists in the UK and abroad. He founded and was the curator of the British Museum’s Contemporary Arts and Cultures Programme 1999 - 2003. His book Art and Artefact - The Museum as Medium, published by Thames & Hudson in 2000 surveys the interaction between contemporary artists and the museum. He was appointed visiting scholar in Museum Studies at New York University 2003-2004 and curated Arte all’ Arte 9 in Tuscany, 2004. He has been curating an ongoing series of artists’ projects at the Freud Museum, London and is Senior Lecturer in Curating at Central St. Martins, University of the Arts London.

WILLIAM FLINDERS PETRIE (1853 – 1942)
Flinders Petrie was at the forefront of the development of archaeology in Egypt. Petrie excavated many major sites in the course of his career. In 1913, he sold his large collection of Egyptian antiquities to UCL, thus creating one of the largest collections outside of Egypt. Between 1889 and 1890 Petrie made two excavations at a pyramid site from the Twelfth dynasty (circa 1850 - 1700 BC) at Lahun, on the edge of the desert 100km south of Cairo. These two excavations are the focus of this installation. Here he identified the pyramid as the tomb of Senwosret II and uncovered the remains of the town built to house its construction workers. Among the discoveries was a unique collection of papyri containing fascinating details about life in ancient Egypt.

THE PETRIE MUSEUM
The Petrie Museum houses an estimated 80,000 objects, making it one of the greatest collections of Egyptian and Sudanese archaeology in the world. It illustrates life in the Nile Valley from prehistory through the time of the pharaohs, the Ptolemaic, Roman and Coptic periods to the Islamic period. The collection includes one of the earliest pieces of linen from Egypt (about 5000 BC); two lions from the temple of Min at Koptos, from the first group of monumental sculpture (about 3000 BC); the earliest example of metal from Egypt, the first worked iron beads, the earliest 'cylinder seal' in Egypt (about 3500 BC); the oldest wills on papyrus, and the only veterinary papyrus from ancient Egypt. The collection is important because so much of it comes from documented excavations. The large typological series of objects provide an insight into how people lived and died in the Nile Valley thousands of years ago.

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