mahony - strategy of action
9 May - 5 July 2007
Private View: 8 May, 6 - 9 pm
Artist talk with Dr. Andrea Phillips: 9 May, 7 pm
Austrian Cultural Forum London
28 Rutland Gate, London, SW7 1PQ, home of the Austrian Cultural Forum London, appears to exist somewhere between prominent cultural institution and grand residence, exposing and promoting Austrian culture by day, and hosting international artists by night. The three bedrooms upstairs have allowed singers to sleep and rehearse, conductors to review and perform, and writers to rest and rewrite.
However, when artist collective mahony arrived fresh from Vienna, they slowly began to undo the very workings of this organisation. As soon as computers and copiers switched to standby at the close of business each day, they literally unpacked, dismantled and shuffled the daily detritus that constitutes this 9–5 working environment. Removing glasses from kitchen cupboards, books from library shelves, and beds from bedrooms, mahony rearranged these materials into temporary interventions, lasting only long enough to be photographed in the midnight hours, before returning them precisely to their ordinary positions. As every corner of our public and professional lives becomes focused on efficiency and achievement, mahony have filled their nights at the Austrian Cultural Forum with absurd plans. Producing painstaking documentation of every objective detail, and developing laborious systems of moving and returning objects, their work becomes a rigorous, yet unoffical process. Appearing to have no purpose, these actions rebel against our IKEA generation, and bring life back to our treasured objects by allowing them out of the strict organisational systems we have created. These nocturnal processes, invisible to everyone but the four artists that are mahony, with the same beginning and end, have essentially usettled the dust and become a pure strategy of
action.
mahony was founded by Andreas Duscha, Stephan Kobatsch, Clemens Leuschner and Jenny Wolka in 2001, Vienna. The group’s fluid and conceptual work defies style or medium, utilising specific information from the site of each project to place their work on the threshold between fact and fiction, and to create new experiences of familiar surroundings.
The Visual Arts Platform is curated by Eva Martischnig and Adriana Marques, who are based in Graz (Austria) and London respectively, and aims to explore local, regional and global contexts of contemporary art by generating new links between Austria and the UK through exhibitions, residencies and artist’s talks.
m a h o n y s t r a t e g y o f a c t i o n
The achievement of targets and goals seem to drive all our actions. Yet increasingly, strategies—that is the plans, methods, or series of moves undertaken to obtain a specific objective—seem to be the buzzword of the day. As every corner of our public and professional lives becomes focused on strategies and plans for delivery, what has become more important—the final goal or the journey we take to get there? Artist collective mahony, fresh from Vienna, will arrive in London for the first time to develop a new work which concentrates on actions and process alone, investigating what happens when gestures are empty and freed from a final purpose. Like explorers from the mountainous Alps, where landscape always marks polar directions, mahony will act as if in a barren desert, liberated from any social or physical references, and will develop a plan to achieve nothing in particular. This paradoxical project, where actions exist only for their own sake, will be developed during a ten day residency at the Austrian Cultural Forum London, and asks us to consider: what happens when actions have no reason? How do we react to the meaningless? And more importantly, can we live without goals?
mahony was founded by Andreas Duscha, Stephan Kobatsch, Clemens Leuschner and Jenny Wolka in 2001 in Vienna. The group’s fluid and conceptual work defies style or medium, utilising specific information from the site of each project to locate their explorations or finished works on the threshold between fact and fiction, and to create new experiences of familiar surroundings. Their recent exhibition “shabby moon, shine” was shown at Gallery Layr Wüstenhagen, Vienna and they will exhibit at this year’s Vienna Art Fair. They have realized numerous projects in Austria, some of them in public spaces. This will be mahony’s first exhibition in London.
Dr. Andrea Phillips, Assistant Director of MFA Curating and Director of the new Curating Architecture project, Goldsmiths, will be leading a discussion with mahony and curators Adriana Marques and Eva Martischnig.
This is the Visual Arts Platform’s second exhibition in the renovated gallery at the Austrian Cultural Forum London, and the fourth in this series of artist commissions. The Visual Arts Platform aims to explore local, regional and global contexts of contemporary art by generating new links between Austria and the UK through exhibitions, residencies and artist’s talks. It is hosted by the Austrian Cultural Forum London, and facilitates exchange between Austria and the UK in the creative fields of music, visual arts, performing arts, film, literature, as well as in various academic fields. The Visual Arts Platform is curated by Eva Martischnig and Adriana Marques, who are based in Graz (Austria) and London respectively, and began in 2006, continuing throughout 2007 with exhibitions by Fabian Seiz, Gregor Graf and Nikola Hansalik.