The meeting of the volunteers at the Royal Standard building

Volunteering at the Bluecoat

GALAPAGOS - exhibitions at the Bluecoat




Between 2007 and 2011 thirteen artists visited the Galápagos Islands as part of a creative residency programme. The artists were invited to explore the Islands both as a visiting tourist via a week-long boat trip and as artist/researcher through a short stay on the island of Santa Cruz. Here each artist had the chance to work with scientists at the Charles Darwin Foundation where they could choose to live and explore cheek by jowl with the many scientists dedicated to the preservation of this important and beguiling archipelago.

TOPOPHOBIA

Fear of place is the focus of this exhibition. Ten artists - Anne Eggebert, Matze Einhoff, David Ferrando Giraut, Polly Gould, Marja Helander, Uta Kogelsberger, Abigail Reynolds, Almut Rink, Emily Speed and Louise K Wilson - respond to this intriguing subject through drawing, video, painting, photography sculpture, sound and installation. 

THE EXHIBITION

The range of media and approaches is wide. Anne Eggebert makes detailed drawings derived from images on Google Earth; Matthias Einhoff uses high-end corporate video techniques to make a spectacle of an urban wasteland; David Ferrando Giraut creates a state of anxiety with his filmic pan of the aftermath of a car accident; Polly Gould constructs distorted topographical watercolours reflected in the surface of a globe; Marja Helander depicts herself out of place between her two cultures of contemporary Finland and Sami nomadic heritage; Uta Kogelsberger reveals uncanny night visions of urban and desert America in her photographs; Almut Rink appropriates the 3D software used by architects to take the viewer on an imaginary journey in a virtual space; Abigail Reynolds exposes disjointed time and place in her use of old book illustrations in collages and assemblage; Emily Speed houses her body in a fortress made from shutters; and Louise K Wilson uses sound derived from her work at a previously top secret Cold War testing site.

As an anxiety disorder, topophobia is an irrational dread of certain places or situations. However, considered as a cultural phenomenon, the condition connects us to existential human questions of how we find our place in the world. The exhibition and accompanying publication take a look at the representation of place and space as both threatened and threatening.

Polly Gould and Marja Helander

The fear of place and the manifestation of this in contemporary art is the territory for TOPOPHOBIA. It takes the form of a group exhibition and related publication. Conceived and curated by Anne Eggebert and Polly Gould TOPOPHOBIA is the product of their long-term collaboration as artists and curators under the name of Eggebert-and-Gould.

Uta Kogelsberger and Emily Speed

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full moon at night sky over Liverpool

Volunteering at Bluecoat Gallery