Normal service sees focus on global concerns
ARRESTING artworks inspired by the “wake-up call” of Covid-19 are the focus of an exhibition that addresses pressing global concerns.
Key themes in The Normal, which opens tomorrow at the University of Edinburgh’s Talbot Rice Gallery, include the pandemic’s impact on communities, health, work, nature and even ideas about progress.
Talbot Rice director Tessa Giblin said
The Normal affirms the urgent need for people to rethink their relationship to the natural world.
The presentation of 21 works brings together artists from around the world who are attuned to this singular moment in history.
The exhibition runs until August 29 and visitors must book in advance through the Gallery’s website.
Among those taking part are Larry Achiampong, Amy Balkin, Anca Benera and Arnold Estefan, the Boyle Family, Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg and Sascha Pohflepp.
Event organisers say the exhibition “seeks to address how our laws, histories and communities are entangled with viruses, ecosystems and each other”.
Ms Giblin added the
exhibition “foregrounds the role art plays in envisaging different relationships to worlds that have yet to emerge”
Larry Achiampong’s ongoing “Detention Series” sees punishment exercise lines, inspired by memes and trending
hashtags, painted on classroom blackboards – highlighting the artist’s view that anti-racism is not something to be
picked up and dropped in a fickle moment.
Meanwhile, a “People’s Archive of Sinking and Melting” by
Amy Balkin and others is an evolving record of the approaching threats posed by climate change.
Talbot Rice Gallery is
adding to the archive by inviting submissions from across Scotland, before and during the exhibition.