In the autumn the M HKA will be holding a solo exhibition by Craigie Horsfield (Cambridge, England 1949), one of the leading artists in the field of social projects in contemporary art as we know them today. His work has opened significant conceptions in the thinking of community and the individual within much of the practice of such projects.
Horsfield works across media in video, photography, sound, drawing, performance and installation used as instruments in the radical rethinking of notions of relation, and of slow time and ... Read more
In the autumn the M HKA will be holding a solo exhibition by Craigie Horsfield (Cambridge, England 1949), one of the leading artists in the field of social projects in contemporary art as we know them today. His work has opened significant conceptions in the thinking of community and the individual within much of the practice of such projects.
Horsfield works across media in video, photography, sound, drawing, performance and installation used as instruments in the radical rethinking of notions of relation, and of slow time and attention, which have been widely influential. Relation in this work concerns, first of all, the idea that being is generated ‘between’ individuals—simply that we bring each other into being—and secondly, that the taking place of ‘being’ is within each encounter, each meeting, each conversation. This is the sphere of relation as telling, and therefore of art.
The social projects, installations, photographs, films, prints and sound works are very closely linked and evolve out of each other. Whichever medium Horsfield works in, he is concerned above all with relation as both ‘being’ and ‘telling’.
Horsfield’s work has taken on a significantly new dimension with the jacquard tapestries, which the artist has been making over the last three years. Made in close cooperation with Flanders Tapestries, these large-scale weavings have come to be an important part of the regeneration of the thinking of tapestry in contemporary art and of a renaissance of Flemish tapestry at large.
The exhibition includes key tapestries in the development of this new thinking: Above the Road East toward Taibique, El Hierro. 15 minutes. February 2002 (2008), an impressive cloud-filled sky—the two dates indicate the time difference between making the film on which it is based and making the tapestry; The Tree at the Edge of the World, Sabinar. La Dehesa, El Hierro. 38 minutes, just before dark, March 2002 (2008); and Zoo, Oxford. January 1990 (2008), a diptych of two rhinoceros on panels totalling 12 metres.
Horsfield has also created new tapestries for this exhibition. Several works are based on pictures made at the Moscow Circus during the Barcelona Conversation (1996), and others present a preview of his most recent and ambitious project to date made with Moonbow the Neapolitan production group he helped to found: the Naples Conversation (2007-2010). These tapestries feature a mass of people at a concert in a community centre in Naples via Gianturco, Naples. September, 2008 (2010), the Easter procession in Sorrento Arciconfraternita di Santa Monica Chiesa della SS. Annunziata, via Fuoro. 2010 (2010) , fireworks over the bay of Naples North West Towards the Bay of Naples from via Partenope. September 2008 (2010) , with two details taken from it, which cover the entire wall of the round room at the M HKA. In combination with these tapestries, Horsfield is also showing prints.
