Moving Streets

Mnemonic City: MOVING STREETS

26/27th April 2013 at the Doomed Gallery, London

‘Moving Streets’ is the latest in a series of exhibitions by MAGMA under the project title “Mnemonic City”, which refers to the City as a place of history and memory.

The pieces and performances in this show find inspiration in a series of walks and meetings by artists from the collective in and around Ridley Road Market in Dalston, London. The pieces on show are a direct response to this particular Market and the artists’ perception and interaction with the trade taking place at the market.

The starting point of ‘Moving Streets‘ was to present the market as a question to the participating artists that seems simple when viewed as a single system – as a place of exchange. However,  in the course of the group’s interaction it revealed itself as a complex organism, which reflects and contains an archetypal world of trade.

Doomed Gallery is situated right in the middle or Ridley Road. The market is among the most gloriously chaotic of London’s markets, a joyful collision of colours, sounds and smells.

The cultural differences, which form the unity of Ridley Road Market, the idea of a place of trade versus a public place, and the basic needs that preserve the market’s existence, all contribute to an artistic response which is an exploration rather than an answer. ‘Moving Streets’ presents the immediate perception of the market in an emotional response that attempts to question ideas of the ‘spectacle’ as a central mechanism of society.

 

Above and underneath Innermost, a video installation of Ines von Bonhorst

The Boilers series of Jaime ValtierraOn the left Gather Along The Market Place and The Fair Market on the right, works by Anna Burel

Clockwise “Untitled” series of drawings by Max, the photographs Eschatocene, First Scene of the Last Act from Pascal Ancel Bartholdi and Heart of Dalston Market of Julien Thomasset

On the left The Nostalgia Machine of Rupert Jaeger and on the right Mask of Ken Flaherty

From the left Dalston, the two pieces in the middle are Men at Work and

on the right Kingsland Road of Yasmine Dainelli  On the top the installation Unpopular Untitled of Yuri Pirondi
  On the top Untitled #23 by Rodrigo Cesar

“… Although the individual works are dissimilar in techniques and practices, the exhibition as a whole recreates the feeling of a market, where the space is filled with conversations and exchanges. These dialogues among art works convey the sense of what coexistence in an urban space means,

and of how difficult and enriching it can be.”

From a review of Alessandra Cianetti:

http://flaneur.me.uk/05/mnemonic-city-moving-streets/