Charlotte Moth: Travelogue

Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein is mounting the first comprehensive museum exhibition of the Paris-based artist Charlotte Moth (born 1978 in the UK).

Charlotte Moth sets out to discover the mysterious in the familiar. She focuses her attention on the spaces and objects with which we live and the conditions of perceiving materiality in space and time. The artist surveys and explores places: everyday, natural, architectural or institutional. And she creates mise-en-scènes so her works engage in “sculptural dialogues“ with each other, dialogues that create truly magical atmospheres.

The artistic devices used by Moth are analogue: photography and film, slide projections and three-dimensional arrangements. The source and point of reference of many of her works is “Travelogue,” a collection of photographs that she has been assembling since 1999, constantly adding more in the course of her research. The artist commented, “As a collection it reveals a personal circulation and movement through my visiting places.“

“My photographic collection functions as a hidden aspect of my practice. … The photographs within the Travelogue await moments of externalisation. These moments themselves create specific spaces and contexts for the encounter of an image, whether on its own or as part of an installation, which may contain a number of components.”
–Charlotte Moth

Moth often chooses architectural icons or topics from art history as the subject of her projects. Her destinations have included Ibiza, following the trail of Dadaist Raoul Hausmann, or St Ives, England, where she visited the studio of British sculptor Barbara Hepworth. Ahead of the exhibition at Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein she has taken a particularly close look at two outstanding bridge structures in the region, and examined sensory materials used in Montessori education. She has also created new works for the show during her stay as artist in residence at Sitterwerk in St. Gallen.

The exhibition combines Moth’s diverse groups of works to create a presentation that engages with the architecture of the Kunstmuseum. It offers visitors a number of surprising spatial experiences: we begin by passing through a shimmering gold curtain, with hidden things awaiting discovery beyond, subsequently immersing ourselves in rooms bathed in coloured light, becoming part of the situation created by the artist.

Charlotte Moth. Travelogue is the sixth exhibition in a series showcasing outstanding young artists. Each artist taking part in the series—so far Rita McBride, Fabian Marcaccio, Monika Sosnowska, Matti Braun and Bojan Šarčević—also curates a presentation from Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein’s collection.

The exhibition, conceived in collaboration with Charlotte Moth, is a production of Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, curated by Christiane Meyer-Stoll. The first monograph on Moth, edited by Christiane Meyer-Stoll with texts by Eva Birkenstock, Penelope Curtis, Fabrice Hergott, Ian Hunt and Kasia Redzisz, as well as the artist’s edition The Stones of Adrian Stokes, I–VI (6 lithographs on BFK Rives paper) will accompany the show.

The artist
Charlotte Moth studied Fine Arts at the Kent Institute of Art and Design at Canterbury and at the Slade School of Art in London. She has taken advantage of various grants to engage in her artistic research, including stays in Germany, Ireland, Canada, Portugal and the USA. Moth lives and works as a freelance artist in Paris and has been lecturing in Fine Art at Goldsmiths College, University of London since 2013.