Event Item: 00052

'Holiday in' at Gasworks

Exhibition: 14th Sep 2007 to 4th Nov 2007

Source: http://www.gasworks.org.uk

'Holiday in' has turned three international art organisations into travel agencies. triangle france (Marseille), together with CAC (Vilnius) and Gasworks (London) offered two artists a three-month holiday, giving them the possibility to tour their respective countries. From March to June 2007 Oliver Bragg (UK) and Juozas Laivys (LT) travelled in France; Nicolas Simarik (FR) and Darius Mikys (LT) in Great Britain; Quentin Armand (FR) and Flávia Müller Medeiros (UK) in Lithuania.

The artists negotiated the terms of the holiday through a range of responses. Darius Mikys decided, on arriving at Gasworks, to temporarily stop being an artist, instead investing his time in learning to play cricket and taking flying lessons. Meanwhile, Nicolas Simarik took an off-season tour of the Isles of Wight and Mann and Hebridean Islands. In Lithuania, Flavia Müller Medeiros became interested in EHU International, a Belarussian university which relocated to Vilnius after its forced closure by the Belarussian government in 2005. In contrast to Juozas Lavys and Quentin Armand, who undertook extensive travelling in France and the Baltic states, Oliver Bragg chose to reside mainly in Paris and recorded his experiences of a city he had not yet visited.

On returning home, each artist was asked to conceive work for a group exhibition at each of the three host venues. At Gasworks the artists present reflections on their holiday-like residency. An Astroturf floor, a multidirectional telescope and a lesson on how-to-pretend-to-be-concentrating-on-someone-when-you-are-not, are some of the objects and strategies inspired respectively by Britain's decorative style, the experience of irresponsible travelling, and the need to detach oneself from a loaded social situation in an unfamiliar setting.

Gasworks,155 Vauxhall Street, London, SE11 5RH