NYAB Event - "A Despot in Flora's Garden" Exhibition

"A Despot in Flora's Garden" Exhibition

This event has ended.
At Simon Preston Gallery
Media: Drawing, Installation

Simon Preston Gallery presents the group exhibition A Despot in Flora's Garden, which opens to the public on Saturday, May 23. Curated by Jasper Sharp, the exhibition brings together projects by four artists - Armando Andrade Tudela, Rosa Barba, Hans Schabus and Michael Stevenson - that engage with and consciously undermine the methods and strategies developed in man's study of natural history.

Mapping, planning, journeying, exploring, discovering, collecting, comparing, preserving, reconstructing: for hundreds of years they have served as means to understand and make sense of the world around us. Sometimes deeply serious in intention (the continuing survival of mankind) but courageously amateurish in approach, the logic and conventions by which those means are governed have largely been honoured and respected. Appropriated by the four artists, they too are now exposed to abuse and manipulation. As a consequence, the authenticity and historical significance of the group's contributions are immediately called into question, and in attempting to make sense of them we risk ending up in a place more uncertain than that in which we began.