Camden Arts Centre Announces Exhibition by Anna Maria Maiolino

Written by Betsy Corning Monday, 21 December 2009 19:45

LONDON.- Italian-born, Brazilian artist Anna Maria Maiolino is one of the most significant artists working in Brazil today. Her new exhibition at Camden Arts Centre will include a site-specific installation and a selection of film works made over the last 30 years. In a career that spans five decades and a diversity of disciplines and mediums including clay, ink, film and performance, Anna Maria Maiolino’s work retains a fundamental concern with creative and destructive processes and with identity; from the subjective to the universal. Conducting a dialogue between opposite yet complementary categories, Maiolino’s practice dissolves the dichotomies of inner and outer, self and other, void and matter, ancient and contemporary.

Maiolino’s early artistic experiments in Brazil throughout the 1960s and 1970s connect her to key moments of Brazilian art history: the New Figuration Movement, Neo-Concretism, and New Brazilian Objectivity, working alongside respected Brazilian artists such as Lygia Clark and Hélio Oiticica. Later, she was associated with the Neo-Avant-Garde in Europe, particularly in Italy, as well as Minimalism and conceptual art in the United States.

At Camden Arts Centre, Maoilino will create an installation using several hundred kilograms of clay. Manually rolling and shaping the clay into hundreds of rolls or balls, the basic shapes used in ceramics, Maiolino refers to everyday tasks, to the individual, society and language; each piece retaining the distinctive marks of its manufacture, but collectively creating an imposing structure.

Over the course of the exhibition the clay will dry and begin to crumble, eventually turning to dust. By labouring to create a work of material impermanence, Maoilino comments on the transience and futility of creation, but also refers to a cycle of renewal, as the clay may be reformed and reused. The exhibition will also include selected films made by Maiolino dating from the 1970s, amongst them: Y, (1974) and +&- (1999).

At Camden Arts Centre you will not only view art but experience the creative process of making and thinking about art. Our galleries show artists new to the art scene, well known figures heading in an unexpected direction and artists from the past who inspire today's practitioners. Whenever you visit, count on seeing fresh and risk-taking work. Artists are at the core of the programme with artists' talks and open studios, workshops led by artists and a series of live art performances. Visit : http://www.camdenartscentre.org/home/

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