Gasworks presents The Work of the Spirit (Parade) A solo exhibition by Tamar Guimarães open 28 May–17 July 2011.
For her first solo exhibition in the UK, Tamar Guimarães presents a newly commissioned short film alongside two existing works: Canoas (2010) and A Man Called Love (2008).
Guimarães’ research-based practice deals with the staging of history. Gathering and manipulating archival images and texts, the artist investigates the relationship between labour, culture and privilege. Her speculative narratives are each rooted in competing instances of modernity, from the theatres and opera houses of 1910s London to the modernist architecture of 1950s Brazil. Often foregrounding social and class structures, they call into question the role of the left.
The slide presentation and accompanying publication A Man Called Love give an account of Francisco Candido Xavier (1910–2002), a Brazilian psychic medium who wrote over 400 books, dictated to him by the dead. Tracing an unusual relationship between redemption and forms of resistance, the work describes how Xavier’s version of Spiritism aligned all too neatly with the conservative views of the ruling class during the years of dictatorship in Brazil from 1964 to 1985.
The video Canoas centres upon a cocktail party at Oscar Niemeyer’s Casa das Canoas; a masterpiece of Brazilian modernist architecture bordered by tropical jungle. In these seductive surroundings, we overhear snippets of guests’ conversations, which range from discussions about the quality of the champagne to the questioning of Gilberto Freyre’s observation that “Brazil has an eroticism that transcends race and class.” The collaging of these fractured statements serves to problematise the habits and routines of cultural producers.
Guimarães’ new commission documents the teaching of the modernist ballet Parade (1917), choreographed by Léonide Massine. The film looks at the overlap between the symbolic and economic value of works of art, which has led the Estate of Massine to refer to choreography as a ‘work of the spirit’*.
Established in 1994, Gasworks is a contemporary art organisation based in South London, housing twelve artists’ studios and offering a programme of exhibitions and events, artists’ residencies, international fellowships and educational projects. Nine studios are rented to London-based artists and three are reserved for an International Residency Programme for non-UK based artists.
Gasworks
155 Vauxhall Street
London SE11 5RH
www.gasworks.org.uk