Marie Thams "It's an Airy Feeling", 2019. Photo: Marie Thams.
Press Release, October 2019
Promises of a Distant Now presents new and recent works by Marie Thams.
The selected works act as critical and artistic reactions to questions of political and anatomic voice and comment on how the current rhetoric landscape affects the common mood. What seems like a constant promise of promotion fills the public mindset and pushes persistent market oriented self-regulation forward, risking to destabilise our experience of ‘now’ and create an inconsistent, detached state of being.
Focus is on Thams’ ongoing work with sound installation, performative text, voice and print. Two installations form the core of the exhibition. The first one is a new 4-channel sound installation consisting of over-sized hanging sculptural wings that surround the audience together with a both dreamy and urgent soundscape bridging speculative economics with lived bodily experience. In the second installation the critical utterance is tied to the subject announced by the voice and to the very opening and vibrating tissue of the vocal cords, creating a tactile platform for listening. A new printed matter including a text by philosopher Nina Power written for the occasion accompanies the exhibition.
The exhibition is supported by Danish Arts Council and Knud Højgaards Fond.
Opening: Thursday October 10, 5-8pm
Exhibition period: October 11 - November 10, 2019.
Opening hours: October 11, 12 & 13: 12-5pm – hereafter by appointment (maciej@urbanek.co.uk)
Performance event
October 12 at 3.30–5pm
Questions of tongue, text, quivering bodies, ethics, and empathy will shape this afternoon for which artists Emily Whitebread and Natascha Nanji are invited to share some of their recent performative texts and work together with Marie Thams. Both artists are UK based and work with writing in their work.
Marie Thams “Promises of a Distant Now”. Photo: Maciej Urbanek.
Marie Thams "It's an Airy Feeling", 2019. Photo: Marie Thams.
Marie Thams “Promises of a Distant Now”. Photo: Marie Thams.
Marie Thams “Promises of a Distant Now”. Photo: Marie Thams.
Marie Thams “Promises of a Distant Now”. Photo: Marie Thams.
Marie Thams "Within My Voice, Orifices" (detail), 2018-19. Photo: Marie Thams.
Marie Thams “Promises of a Distant Now”. Photo: Maciej Urbanek.
Marie Thams is a visual artist based in Copenhagen. Thams holds an MFA from The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Schools of Visual Arts, 2011 and a BA (Hons) in Fine Arts and History of Art from Goldsmiths, 2009. Thams’ work is driven by a wish to create critical and sensuously enclosing works. She works in research and context based and her productions often result in larger installations consisting of sound, video and sculptural elements. Voice plays a key role in Thams’ practice and she works with sound, speech, and text as part of installation, publication, audio, and performance. Some of the ongoing questions in Thams’ work concern the possible points of departure and impetus we humans have in the world; the experienced relation between social, political and biological being; valorisation of human activities in the semio-capitalist society; human productivity; the present labour market and production strain.
Emily Whitebread is a visual artist with an MA in ArtScience, Royal Academy Den Haag, 2014 and a BA in Fine Art and Art History, Goldsmiths, 2009. Emily has just finished a commission for Art in Romney Marsh and has exhibited nationally and internationally. Highlights of her career included Frieze First Thursdays, South London Gallery, Bold Tendencies, Chisenhale Gallery, Whitstable Biennale and TENT Rotterdam.
Natascha Nanji is a multidisciplinary artist and writer who brings together, ideas, people and objects to create spaces from which to assemble dialogic encounters. Working at the intersection of anthropology, art and theatre-based methodologies, her work sets the scene to narrate speculative journeys. Natascha has a background in Social Anthropology, and a BA in Fine Art & History of Art studied at Goldsmiths, 2009 and an MA in Critical Writing in Art & Design from the Royal College of Art, 2017.
URBANEK is an artist-run space in South East London, run by Maciej Urbanek.