Gossip, Scandal and Good Manners
Friday, 2nd July 2010, 6-9pm
Gossip, Scandal and Good Manners is the first solo presentation in the UK of the work of Mexican artist, writer and publisher, Ulises Carrión (1941-1989), curated by the first year MA Curating Contemporary Art at the Royal College of Art in collaboration with Martha Hellion.
Informed by the structure of Other Books and So, the exhibition between 12 - 26 June 2010 at The Showroom, will double as a flexible platform for performances, seminars, talks, screenings, and a display of the different elements of Carrión’s practice alongside rare archival material.
KALIED editions will host the launch of an accompanying publication designed by Fraser Muggeridge Studio will provide documentation of the exhibition project and events programme, together with newly commissioned texts setting Carrión’s work in context.
Gossip, Scandal and Good Manners, the video work from which the exhibition takes its title, is built around marginal patterns of everyday information exchange, or gossip. Carrión’s practice emerged from Fluxus and concrete poetry circles in Mexico before he moved to Europe in the mid-1960s. He promoted a transnational dialogue with his mail art projects and initiatives such as Other Books and So, active as a bookshop in Amsterdam (1975-1978) and subsequently as an archive.
The project invokes the spirit of Carrión’s practice through the activation of his provocative propositions and methodologies. Incorporating concrete and visual poetry, mail art, videos, sound works and ‘bookworks’, Carrión’s diverse practice focused on language as a raw material and the exploration of alternative forms of distribution and communication.
Realised with the kind support of the Monique Beudert fund.
With special thanks to Martha Hellion, without whom this project would not have been possible.
With thanks to the Mexican Embassy (London), the Netherlands Media Art Institute (Amsterdam), Chelsea Library and Archive, Archive for Small Press and Communication (Bremen), Ibid Projects, The Block and Yume Pictures.
For further information and a full programme of events, please visit or contact Nicole Yip at nicole.yip(at)network.rca.ac.uk
