Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc
An Italian Film (Africa Addio)
5 October–21 December 2012
Preview: 4 October, 6pm–late
Tower Works Engine House
Globe Road, Leeds, LS11 5QG
Céline Condorelli
Additionals
26 October 2012–19 January 2013
Preview: 25 October, 6pm–late
TV Studio, Roger Stevens Building
University of Leeds, LS2 9JT
Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc
An Italian Film (Africa Addio)
In the engine house of a former pin factory in Leeds, French artist Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc presents a new film and installation.
Abonnenc’s new work confronts the contemporary and historic exploitation of copper in the Katanga region of Congo, a region that has been repeatedly ravaged since its colonization by Belgian King Leopold II in the nineteenth century. Leopold first looted small copper crosses, forms of currency made by a sect known as the ‘copper eaters,’ that were shipped to Europe for industrial use. As a way of underlining the violence of the colonial act and its continuing contemporary enactment in the post-industrial context, Abonnenc has subjected several copper crosses, bought from private collectors, to a process of recasting with the help of a local foundry.
The resulting film is the first part of a wider body of work that takes Jacopetti and Prosperi’s notorious 1960 film Africa Addio as a starting point to discuss the imperial nostalgia embodied, not only by this film, but also by particular instances of modern art.
An Italian Film (Africa Addio) is showing concurrently as part of the contemporary art biennial Les Ateliers de Rennes, from 15 September–9 December 2012.
Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc uses drawings, installations, photographs, interviews and archives to counter collective amnesia and erasure of experiences and traumas. In 2011 he was commissioned by Gasworks to produce Foreword to Guns for Banta, which uses the films of pioneering filmmaker Sarah Maldoror as a catalyst to question whether the spirit of liberation movements of 60s Africa can be reactivated.
Céline Condorelli
Additionals
Artist Céline Condorelli takes a de-commissioned TV studio in an iconic Chamberlin, Powell and Bonn building from 1970, as the site for Additionals, a series of sculptures that appear in installation, on film and in text.
Additionals simultaneously references conceptual art, the methodologies of architectural proposals, and filmmaking through art direction and set design. Arranged in a multi-part sculptural installation, the prop-like objects make temporary adjustments to existing conditions, while drawing from Pistoletto’s Oggetti in Meno (objects one can do without, usually translated as Minus Objects, 1965–1966).
Additionals was developed during a publishing project initiated by Will Holder and Beatrice Gibson, who invited a group of practitioners to work together using Cornelius Cardew’s 1967 score The Tiger’s Mind. Each practitioner adopted a character from the score with Jesse Ash as ‘Wind,’ Condorelli as ‘Tiger,’ Gibson as ‘Circle,’ Holder as ‘Amy,’ John Tilbury as ‘Mind,’ and Alex Waterman as ‘Tree.’
Additionals articulates the relationships between the characters through quasi-functional structures, such as Structure for Reading and Structure for Preparing a Piano. Additionals features as the props in Gibson’s new film, titled The Tiger’s Mind (commissioned by The Showroom, CAC Brétigny and Index, Stockholm). During the exhibition, the structures will be activated through a performance by Holder as ‘Amy,’ and a music composition by Waterman as ‘Tree.’
Céline Condorelli works with art and architecture, combining a number of approaches from developing structures for ‘supporting’ to broader enquiries into forms of commonality and discursive sites. Recent exhibitions include The Parliament, Archive of Disobedience, Umeå Bildmuseet, Sweden, Social Fabric, Iniva, London and Lund Konsthall, Sweden and Surrounded by the Uninhabitable, SALT, Istanbul.
A programme of critical events accompanies the two commissions. See www.pavilion.org.uk for more information.
Partners: Arts Council England, Brass Founders, Creative Space Management, École des Beaux-arts de Nantes Métropole, Henry Moore Foundation, Homes and Communities Agency, Leeds City Council, Les Ateliers de Rennes, The Showroom, and University of Leeds.
