Please ask our Visitor Assistants if you have any questions.

This exhibition guide is available in a large print format. Please ask at the Information Desk located in the Café.

Modern Art Oxford is grateful to the many individuals, companies

and organisations that have helped to realise this exhibition and the

KALEIDOSCOPE programme.

Upper Gallery

Middle Galleries

Piper Gallery

Project Space(Ground Floor)

Marcel Broodthaers (b.1924, Brussels, Belgium, d.1976, Cologne, Germany)

ABC-ABC Images, 1974 (2016)Double projection from two carousel slide projectors with a tray of 80 slides each and timer, variable dimensions,

Casserole and Closed Mussels,1964Mussel Shells, pigment, polyester resin, iron casserole with wooden handles, 30.5 x 27.9 x 24.8 cm

Mademoiselle Rivière and Monsieur Bertin, 1975Nine photographs, black and white, on paper, on hardboard, 101 x 90.5 cm

Maria Loboda (b.1979, Krakow, Poland)

To separate the sacred from the profane, 2016Birch faced plywood, polystyrene, reed, galvanised steel, paracord, wire, scaffolding tube,488 x 488 x 50cm

Darcy Lange (b.1946, Urenui, New Zealand, d. 2005, Auckland, New Zealand)

Studies of Four Oxfordshire Schools, 1977Five video works on monitors

Hans Haacke (b.1936, Cologne, Germany)

A Breed Apart, 1978Seven photographs, black and white and colour, on paper on hardboard, 91 x 91 cm

Kerry James Marshall (b.1955, Birmingham, USA)

At the End of the Wee Hours, 1984Cut-paper collage, 25.4 x 20.3 cm

At the End of the Wee Hours, 1985Cut-paper collage, 20.3 x 15 cm

At the End of the Wee Hours, 1986Cut-paper collage, 25.4 x 20.3 cm

Iman Issa (b.1979, Cairo, Egypt)

Heritage Studies #10, 2015Copper, aluminium, vinyl text,55 x 235 x 55 cm

Heritage Studies #13, 2015Silicone, bronze, painted wood, vinyl text, 160 x 70 x 60 cm

Heritage Studies #14, 2015Brass rods with plate, vinyl text, 200 x 40 x 1.5 cm

Broodthaers’ work is characterised by a playful humour, which was often directed at public institutions that display and disseminate art. In his ‘Interview with a Cat’ (1970, Düsseldorf), the artist mocked the often ponderous nature of numerous conversations on art:

Marcel Broodthaers: “Is that one a good painting? … Does it correspond to what you expect from that very recent transformation which goes from Conceptual Art to this new version of a kind of figuration, as one might say?”Cat: “Miaow.”

This conversation was recorded at Broodthaers’ invented, mobile museum, the Museum of Modern Art, Department of Eagles, which appeared as a series of installations in his Brussels home and within various exhibitions between 1968 and 1971. This “political parody of art institutions [and] artistic parody of political events”, as the artist described it, highlighted the systems through which art is valued, undermining the authority of the museum as a centre of objective knowledge.

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9.Loboda’s artistic practice examines the meanings of folkloric signs and symbols. The large circular structure created at Modern Art Oxford extends her enquiry into the ways in which different cultures endow objects with mystical significance. The straw, bamboo and steel structure is designed to resemble a chinowa, a sacred threshold in the Shinto religion in Japan, which purifies the space around it. The sculpture both endorses the hallowed space of the gallery and acknowledges its often-misplaced aura of spirituality. She described her desire “to give those worn-out systems their power back, sort of an eternal danger, like buried atomic waste, which is still radiating underneath the surface of a complex modern world.”

Lange was a filmmaker who looked at social systems in action, often focusing on people at work, for instance in mines or on farms. For his 1977 exhibition at Modern Art Oxford, Lange videoed multiple school lessons at public and private schools in Oxfordshire. The lessons were then shown back to the teachers and pupils, with both lessons and this footage of the participants’ reactions ultimately exhibited together. The tapes invite reflection on how educational environments greatly shape the ways in which information is communicated and received. Lange described how the school studies were intended “to illustrate the mental effects of education” [and] “our social structure, its resulting problems and inner manipulations.”

Haacke is known for his incisive photographs, sculptures and installations that expose the workings of institutions from major museums to corporations. Deeply political, Haacke was a leading figure of institutional critique, in which artists questioned the inherent power structures within dominate organisations. Haacke engages audiences through the use of stark imagery, deadpan text and public surveys, which invite us to reconsider our assumptions about his subjects. In his series A Breed Apart, commissioned by Modern Art Oxford, Haacke made visible the uncomfortable realities of the leading local employer, Oxfordshire-based car company British Leyland, a known supplier of military vehicles to the South African Apartheid government, commenting: “I believe it is necessary for the public, for the voters, to become aware of these interdependencies and come up with, hopefully, an alternative to it. I would like the visitors to have, more or less, all the information they need in order to make sense of what they are exposed to.”

Marshall’s works present narratives and histories of the African diaspora in the visual language of Western history painting and modernism. Through this subversion of tradition, Marshall attempts to cast light on forgotten histories, reminding audiences that what we encounter in museums is not always the full story. Explaining the genesis of this early collage series, he revealed: “… the poem Notebook of a Return to my Native Land by Aimé Césaire (1947) showed me how politics and poetics could be interwoven to magical effect. I made a series of collages titled after the refrain of Notebook […] Using analytical cubism as a model, I tried to evoke the sense of the tropics embodied in Césaire’s poem without reducing realistic detail to shape and texture. In this way, I could highlight the complex pictorial space and preserve the narrative capacity of representational imagery.”

Much of Issa’s work is concerned with monuments and the process of memorialisation. This interest manifests in abstract sculptures, which examine the relationships between object, text and the conventions of museum display. Issa has emphasised the alchemical potential of art, saying in an interview: “In art you can show someone a chair and say it’s a table, and they might believe you. The magic is in the possibility that the chair is both unique to itself and that it can signal a lot more besides.”

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Katja Novitskova (b.1984, Tallin, Estonia)

Approximation Mars I, 2014/2016Digital print on aluminium, cutout display, gravel, stones, 140 x 240 cm

Approximation V, 2012 / 2016Digital print on aluminium, cutout display, 120 x 140 cm

Approximation I, 2012 / 2016Digital print on aluminium, cutout display, 195 x 113 cm

Novitskova’s work reflects on the impact of digital imagery on our understanding of reality. The artist describes how her interest stemmed from “how this new media actively

Yoko Ono (b. 1933, Tokyo, Japan)

Painting to Exist Only When It’s Copied or Photographed, 1964 (2016)Inkjet printed pad, 250 sheets, 14.8 x 14.8 cm

One of a series of ‘Instruction paintings’, Ono asks the audience (implicitly an audience of artists) to “let people copy or photograph your paintings. Destroy the originals.” This invitation questions our assumptions about the cultural and monetary values placed on unique works of art such as paintings, by suggesting a radical act of their total destruction, to be replaced with copyright-free total image circulation. The work emphasises the subversive spirit of the witty Fluxus artists with which Ono was associated in New York. As Ono explained in 1966: “Instruction painting makes it possible to explore the invisible, the world beyond the concept of time and space. And then, sometimes later, the instructions themselves will disappear and be properly forgotten.”

Louise Lawler (b.1947, Bronxville, USA)

No Drones, 2016Printed vinyl mounted to wall, variable dimensions

Lawler investigates the ways in which works of art are contextualised; and the impact of this framing on the audience’s reception of those works. Considered one of the so-called ‘Pictures Generation’, her work came to the fore in the 1980s when artists questioned the proliferation of images through the mass media. Lawler has recently turned her attention to her own work and the ways in which it can be represented and reframed. This series revisits her most recognisable photographs and their contexts, by transforming them into temporary vinyl installations. Explaining the guiding principle of her work, Lawler observed: “I think there is a lot of distortion involved in how art exists in the world. So I’m distorting it myself.”

Hardeep Pandhal (b.1985, Birmingham, UK)

Career Suicide, 2016Mixed-media installation, dimensions variable

Pandhal makes videos, sculptures, drawings and installations which examine the perpetuation of cultural stereotypes across history. Sifting through museum pamphlets, anthropological studies, Victorian newspapers, political advertising and propaganda, Pandhal’s work explores the ways in which British-Asian identity is constructed (and deconstructed) through caricature and other forms of symbolic representation. When asked whether he sees himself as a satirist, Pandhal responded, “Part of me says no because I'm not trying to make people laugh, but a part of me says yes, because the idea of the work… is to put viewers in a position of self-reflection, which is what satire does.”

redefines the world and culture, and everything.” In her sculptures and installations, Novitskova appropriates pictures found online and repurposes them as freestanding objects. Sheet-thin, these works project the flatness of digital images into three-dimensional space. Co-opting the aesthetics of corporate advertising, the artist explores how the format of the image, be it online stock photography or marketing signs and banners, defines the audience’s perception of its meaning.

MODERN ART OXFORD

KALEIDOSCOPE

THE VANISHED REALITY

12 November - 31 December

Welcome to KALEIDOSCOPE, a celebration of 50 years of contemporary art, performance and experimental visual culture at Modern Art Oxford.

Because it’s a special year, we have tried something a little different. Instead of closing when artwork is being installed, the galleries will be open all year round in 2016. In KALEIDOSCOPE you’ll see works from past exhibitions at Modern Art Oxford sharing space with an exciting roster of new commissions. Artworks returning to the gallery from across the world appear alongside works by artists showing here for the first time. The past and the present are combined in what we hope you will find engaging, reflexive shows that touch on one of our most enduring preoccupations – the nature of time.

Over 700 exhibitions have been presented at Modern Art Oxford since the gallery was founded 50 years ago. KALEIDOSCOPE does not aim to be a definitive historical account by any means. It offers a snapshot of some of the many highlights in our history, captured in the exhibitions, performances, talks and events taking place throughout the year. It aims to reflect some key ideas in contemporary art over the past half a century.

The Vanished Reality

The artists in The Vanished Reality adopt different strategies to explore how the meaning of art is shaped by the political, economic and social conditions in which it is produced and presented. The context in which we encounter a work of art can often impact significantly on the way in which we perceive it. These overlooked framing devices are retrieved and subjected to scrutiny by the artists included in The Vanished Reality.

In the Upper Gallery, you may enter through a circular sculpture by Maria Loboda. Inspired by the chinowa found at Shinto shrines in Japan, this structure marks a space that is charged with significance. With this gesture, Loboda pokes fun at the hallowed environment of the gallery and equates it to a sacred or religious space. From here, you can encounter works by artists from different generations: from the conceptual art of Broodthaers, Darcy Lange and Hans Haacke produced in the 1960s and 70s, to recent works by Louise Lawler, and contemporary commissions by Loboda and Hardeep Pandhal.

The title of this exhibition comes from a fictional 1967 interview between Belgian artists Marcel Broodthaers and René Magritte, in which Broodthaers described his desire to reinstate “the vanished reality” surrounding – and contributing to the meaning of – Magritte’s surrealist paintings. This wish to contextualise works of art was soon reflected in his own practice, when in 1968 Broodthaers invented a museum, fragments of which began to feature throughout his home and exhibitions. This Museum of Modern Art, Department of Eagles served to deconstruct the systems through which art is classified and distributed, illustrating the highly subjective ways in which art accrues meaning and value.

KALEIDOSCOPE celebrates the role art plays in shaping our perception of the world. For each of us, our visual perception is influenced as much by our unique experiences as what we see in front of us. Our interest is in your understanding of contemporary art and life. Whether you’re looking at an artwork from the 1960s or watching a new performance, being here you are also part of Modern Art Oxford’s history. We hope you’ll share your memories of the gallery with us online:#KALEIDOSCOPE Twitter @mao_gallery Instagram @mao_gallery

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