SAATCHI GALLERY WELCOMES ARTISTS-IN-RESIDENCE TO RESPOND TO TUTANKHAMUN
Open from: 2 November 2019
Please note that entry into this exhibition requires admission to the main exhibition, Tutankhamun: Treasures of the Golden Pharaoh. Tickets can be purchased online at www.tutankhamun-london.com.
Saatchi Gallery aims to bring contemporary art to a wider audience by providing an innovative programme platform for emerging international and local artists. For this year's Artist-in-Residence, Cyril de Commarque and British artist Kate Daudy will respond to the key themes explored in Tutankhamun: Treasure of the Golden Pharaoh.
Installation View, Cyril de Commarque: Artificialist, 2019
Artificialis has been accompanied by a programme of talks arranged by the artist.
Artificialis takes as its starting point the Anthropocene era - the period when man first had an impact on Earth's geology and ecosystems - then looks towards the future, meditating on the effect technology and scientific advancement will have on humankind and the environment.
The artist invites the viewer to contemplate this new world, starting with the notion that Homo Sapiens will be superseded by a species of its own creation, Homo Artificialis. Rather than portray this in Utopian or Dystopian terms, Commarque interrogates his own feelings through a series of sculptural mise-en-scènes, each piece documenting the transition from one age to another.
Located on the Gallery's second floor, the installation includes four figurative pieces are made from the crudest form of plastic waste, and in sync with the show's themes have been created by the human hand with the assistance of robotic tools. The sculptures, which include two flower-shaped neons suspended from the ceiling, are standalone works however each is united by a common visual language. The atmosphere is heightened by a sound work created by the artist in collaboration with the composer Toni Castells."
For press information about Cyril de Commarque, please contact Albany Arts Communications:
Mark Inglefield:
mark@albanyartscommunications.com
t: +44 (0) 20 78 79 88 95
m: +44 (0) 75 84 19 95 00
Harry Dougal:
harry@albanyartscommunications.com
t: +44 (0) 20 78 79 88 95
m: +44 (0) 77 69 51 25 42
@cyrildecommarque #cyrildecommarque
Installation View, Kate Daudy: It Wasn't That At All, 2019
Daudy's multi-media exhibition, It Wasn't That At All, explores the common interests we share as human beings. With a celebrated ability to immerse herself in the subject, Daudy has produced an installation that draws on her own reflections on home and identity, closeness to nature, faith, science and human mortality.
Over several months, Daudy has been researching Egyptology and engrossing herself in understanding the faith and traditions of Ancient Egypt. She has also been exploring contemporary surgery and ancient Egyptian medical beliefs and practices. Starting with a video wall of eyes staring out from phones and TV monitors, the multi-faceted installation immerses the viewer in a journey that explores themes common not just to the hastily buried 3,500 year old Tut, but to each of us today. Whatever our circumstances we will experience death, be forced to consider questions of family, home, identity, absence and loss. Our life is what our thoughts and actions make it.
Set in a motherboard of interconnected spaces will be Daudy's own temporary studio where she will welcome visitors to share books and ideas and participate in workshops. Together with a London-wide map of Egyptian reference points and specially commissioned podcasts, visitors are invited to consider what most matters to us and what always connects us, whether learning from the past or from one another now.
In a small city of empty plinths and display cases dedicated to noted absence, Daudy used her distinct humour to play with the viewer's preconceived ideas of exhibitions. Presented as a traditional gallery installation - except, absent of objects. Ranging from the ancient Egyptian fortress of Buhen, subsumed by the Nile in 1964 with the construction of the Aswan Dam, to ideas and personal recollections, the labels provoke the viewer's imagination.
With special thanks to Caroline d'Esneval for her creative and curatorial contribution.
Her accompanying book 'I Am Easy to Find' is a play with words referring to the coincidental discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb, hidden in plain sight under the vast tomb of Ramses VI for thousands of years."
"The transience of life and the soul dominates Kate Daudy's uplifting exhibition, 'It Wasn't That At All'. From street art that washes away, impermanent writing placed around a city to words applied to fences, stones and bridges around the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, much of her carefully considered and poetic art is intended not to survive. She relishes the transitory nature of our existence on this earth, a love of the gesture for its own sake and her work embodies a rejection of consumerism. Happiness can be achieved in the ephemeral and that should be valued more by society." - Rebecca DanielsYou can see each page here.
For press information about Kate Daudy, please contact Branch Arts:
Susie Lawson | Director, Branch Arts@katedaudystudio #katedaudy
Cyril de Commarque (b.1970) lives and works in London. de Commarque has had numerous exhibitions including a solo exhibition at MACRO and an acclaimed sound performance in London for which he built a 25-meter-long polished/mirrored boat sculpture entitled Fluxland along the river Thames. His works have been featured in prominent group shows at institutions including the Grand Palais, The Foundation Louis Vuitton, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France and the Fondazione Giorgio Cini during the Venice Biennale alongside works by Marcel Duchamp, Joseph Beuys, Gerhard Richter and Ai Weiwei.
https://www.cyrildecommarque.com
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Kate Daudy (b.1970) lives and works in London and is recognised for her work exploring the limits of language. Known for her written interventions in public and private spaces, Daudy's work is based on an ancient Chinese literati practice of seeking to understand the universe through art and nature. Her observations have fed into an array of artistic disciplines including sound work, performance, interactive collaboration, photography, sculpture and large-scale installation. She commonly uses wood or felt fabric to create her writings, as well as her more characteristic ink drawings. Her words reflect or contrast with the nature of the object she makes or chooses, and value what she writes on for what it might evoke or represent.
Daudy's work explores the limits of language. She commonly uses drawing, collage, wood or felt fabric to create works which interrogate themes affecting humanity. Every piece is highly researched and returns to her a passion ignited by Chinese studies and a profound interest in calligraphy and philosophy and in the connections between artistic and scientific fields. Her work has been executed in an array of artistic forms and disciplines including sound work, performance, interactive collaboration, photography, sculpture and large-scale installation.
In 2017, Daudy's piece Am I My Brother's Keeper, examined questions of home and identity in the light of the refugee crisis and has become a symbol for the work of the UNHCR. Following its installation in St. Paul's Cathedral in London it is currently touring Spain for eight months on the invitation of the Spanish government.
Daudy has had numerous exhibitions worldwide and is engaged in regular philanthropic and activist commitments. Recent highlights include a large-scale installation of her work Am I My Brother's Keeper inside London's St Paul's Cathedral. The work originally created by Daudyfor UNHCR has also been shown at Manifesta in Palermo, Manchester Art Gallery, Edinburgh International Festival.
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Produced by the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities and IMG, and presented in London by Viking Cruises TUTANKHAMUN: Treasures of the Golden Pharaoh will unveil more than 150 original objects from the tomb, 60 of which are travelling out of Egypt for the first and final time before they return for permanent display within the Grand Egyptian Museum currently under construction. In residence at the Saatchi Gallery from Saturday 2 November 2019 - Sunday 3 May 2020, the exhibition commemorates the 100th anniversary of the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb, and is the final chance to see these glittering artefacts before they return to Egypt forever.
