Pascale Marthine Tayou
dal 15/11/2007 al 12/1/2008
Segnalato da
15/11/2007
Pascale Marthine Tayou
MK Gallery, Milton Keynes
Plastik Diagnostik. This solo exhibition comprises a series of new and recent installations and an offsite work placed in the specific context of the gallery. His nomadic movement between places is reflected in his practice, in the materials he uses, his artistic sources and his thinking.
Through his installations, drawings, films and performances, Pascale Marthine Tayou (Cameroon, b. 1966) articulates the nomadic existence of his life, from birth in Cameroon to travelling throughout Europe and his ceaseless journeying as an artist working internationally and moving from country to country. For his first exhibition in the UK, Marthine Tayou will show a selection of work that questions cultural and national identity and the role of the individual. As a self described foreigner and traveller, his work is directly influenced by the drama that he witnesses on the streets of the countries he travels through, and is manifest in the personal artefacts and ephemera including train and airline ticket stubs, restaurant and shop receipts and labels or wrappings for socks, razors and batteries. His insistent reuse and recycling of these objects confirms the fluidity and borderlessness of space, culture and thought, and that one’s own biography is inextricably linked with economics, migration and politics.
Two major works in the exhibition, Wall Street, 2005 and Jpegafrica/Africagift, 2006 refer directly to Africa and its countries. Wall Street is a wall-based installation of neon signs and logos of hundreds of national and multi-national companies that permeate the Cameroon landscape, from petrol suppliers to skin and haircare products. The vibrant colour and placement of neon signs is at once a monument to commerce and an indictment of the homogenisation of global culture. Jpegafrica/Africagift is made up of every flag of each African country arranged in a large pyramid pile. Each flag is imbued with the symbolism of national identity and acts as a substitute for an African citizen or collective, continually reconfigured. The Cameroonian flag acts as a self-portrait within a larger picture. Marthine Tayou does not see himself as an African artist however, but like that of his peers, his work is bound up with the cultures and communities of Africa and its identity within the rest of the world. Rather than seeing the continent as one that is consistently needy, Marthine Tayou attempts, through his work, to provide a different view of Africa, one that has a people and culture that is valuable and can give to the rest of the world.
The city of Milton Keynes provides the basis of one of the works in the exhibition. In the Cube Gallery, Marthine Tayou’s observations of the city as he has travelled to and from the gallery will be reflected in Graffiti Love, large scale images of graffiti on the walls of the pedestrian underpasses in the city centre. The work will be accompanied by ballpoint pen line drawings from the series Love Letters, 2004, which represent the artist’s biographical universe, asking questions of cultural identity, global politics and individual emotions. As a whole, the work is intended as a gift to Milton Keynes and highlights areas that Marthine Tayou has taken an interest in during his visits to the city.
As well as other works in the exhibition, including a series of crystal sculptures, Milton Keynes Gallery will present Marthine Tayou’s imposing work Plastic Bags, 2004 offsite at the city’s newly-opened MK Dons Football Stadium. The work, which has been shown previously at the Venice Biennale, is made up of hundreds of found plastic shopping bags, this time to be found within Milton Keynes, installed in netting suspended above the ground. The installation is particularly apt for Milton Keynes, as a regional shopping centre. Here the plastic bag becomes an icon of modern disposable society, a mirror held up to the excesses of contemporary living.
A full colour catalogue with a text by Nicholas Bourriaud will be published to accompany the exhibition.
Related Events
In Conversation
Wednesday 28 November
Pascale Marthine Tayou will discuss with his work with curator Jerome Sans, during a tour of the exhibition.
Exhibition Discussion Group
Saturday 24 November, 11–11.45am
Join the Gallery’s education team for a tour of the exhibition followed by an informal discussion of its themes.
Image: He, 2007. Image by Ela Bialkowska. Courtesy the artist and Galleria Continua, San Gimignano, Beijing
Press information: Giselle Richardson by telephone: 01908 558 302 or by email: g.richardson@mk-g.org
Opening 16 november 2007 at 5 pm
Milton Keynes Gallery
900 Midsummer Boulevard - Milton Keynes
Free admission