Madeinbritaly, at Collect, Somerset House, London, UK
ORLANDO
In her 1928 novel Orlando, Virginia Woolf makes a joyful case for transgressing all limits on desire, curiosity, and knowledge. Woolf seems unwilling to acknowledge the political edge in her playful skewering of gender roles, and in her creation of a protagonist who is bound by neither of the two forces that define us as human: sex and death.
Orlando feels like an artefact from and for the future, a character who refuses to be bound by conventions, and who invites us to consider the possibility that all of our certainties are in fact contingencies.
The exhibition embraces exactly this perspective by creating a seamless fluidity of gender, time, identity, contexts, definitions and conventions in which extremely decorative aesthetics coexists with a minimalistic one. There is a natural osmosis of light and darkness, curves and straight lines, shine and matt, light and heavy, precious and simple. Function and Beauty are interconnected with grace and profound truth within the same narration which, through the love of oddities, of the paradoxical, the grotesque, virtuosity and exaltation, ultimately ends up being the “the longest and most charming love letter” ever written.
Exhibition curated by Valentina Buscicchio & Marco Venturi
Artists & Designers:
Annemette Beck | Freya and Chris Bramble-Carter | Mark Brazier-Jones Tommaso Corvi-Mora | Sotis Filippides | Claudia Frignani | Whitaker Malem | Rosa Nguyen | Tracey Rowledge | Andrea Salvatori