Jan Mot

Hollybush Gardens hosting Jan Mot (Brussels) presenting Sven Augustijnen's Summer Thoughts

Works by Andrea Büttner will be on view upstairs.

Summer Thoughts by Sven Augustijnen is a long-term research project that originated in an invitation from A Prior Magazine to react to Documenta 13 (Kassel, 2012). Inspired by the tapestries of Norwegian artist Hannah Ryggen (1894–1970), Sven Augustijnen responded in the form of a letter to curator Marta Kuzma. The series of letters spanning the period from 2012 until today, along with newspapers, photographs, books, and other archival material, bring together temporalities, personalities, and topographies. They constitute a layered network of references, associations, personal experiences, cultural occurrences, and political events happening at the time of writing. Summer Thoughts questions the present state of crisis in Europe as not merely an economic or political one, but as a moral and cultural challenge marked by the twisted meaning of democracy and freedom, personal responsibility, and, as a consequence, fertile ground for the resurgence of far-right movements.

Sven Augustijnen (1970) lives and works in Brussels. His lms, publications and installations on political, historical and social themes constantly challenge the genre of the documentary, re ecting a wider interest in historiography and a predilection for the nature of storytelling: ‘Historiography is by no means a natural phenomenon. The way we use stories, images and ction to construct reality and history fascinates me.’ His solo-shows include Kunsthalle Bern; Wiels, Centre for Contemporary Art, Brussels; de Appel, Amsterdam; Malmö Konsthall; Vox, Centre pour l’Image contemporaine, Montréal; CCS Bard, Annandale-on-Hudson. Recent group-shows include The Un nshed Conversation, The Power Plant, Toronto ; Ce qui ne sert pas s’oublie, CAPC, Bordeaux; Gestures and archives of the present, genealogies of the future, Taipei Biennale; Living Together, Kunsthalle Wien.

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A selection of works by Andrea Büttner (including Painted Stones, 2017)

Painted Stones, 2017, is a series of 37 black and white gelatine silver prints depicting images of painted stones made by artists such as David Hammons, Annemarie von Matt, Kurt Schwitters and Fahrelnissa Zeid, as well as late Palaeolithic age cave stones, amongst others. The images were found during Andrea Büttner’s research into painted stones, drawn from online catalogues, museum websites, auction sites etc. Büttner often makes direct references to other historical cultural gures and artists as a means to acknowledge that artists are implicated within a set of ideologies and contexts. The series also brings to the fore a re-evaluation of marginal and undervalued materials and techniques, continuing Büttner’s interest in the concepts and affects of fallibility, littleness and humility.

Andrea Büttner (1972) lives and works in London and Berlin. She studied at the Royal College of Art in London, Hum- boldt University of Berlin and Berlin University of the Arts. Selected solo exhibitions include: Hammer Museum, LA, USA; Kunsthalle Sankt Gallen, Switzerland; Musée Régional d’Art Contemporain Occitanie / Pyrénées-Mediterranée, Sérignan, France; Kunsthalle Wien, Austria; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, USA; Tate Britain, London, UK; Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany. She was a nominee of the 2017 Turner Prize and is a winner of the 2009 Max Mara Art Prize for Women.

Condo is a collaborative exhibition by 46 galleries across 17 London spaces.