Exhibition Opening Soon!
Curated by: The Institute of Radical Imagination and Sale Docks
May 16 – July 21 2024
Opening Hours: Thu-Sun, 2 to 6 pm.
Closed: May 25
The exhibition presents works largely produced during a three-day workshop at Sale Docks led by Taring Padi, Powernotte, and the Climate Justice League. The result was a series of cardboard puppets and a 15-meter long wooden fish that will be used for a water demonstration (planned on May 25) against the presence of big cruise ships in the Venice lagoon. These objects reject, in practice, any rigid definition, blurring the distinction between artworks and activist props. The exhibition itself reclaims an uncertain status, more the documentation of an action than a display of discrete objects to be contemplated.
Alongside the props made for the No Cruise Ships action in the Lagoon and for a climate justice march in Milan, the exhibition features two films by Oliver Ressler (one documenting the 2019 Venice Climate Camp, the other reflecting on the occupation of the Hambach forest), and a series of banners, paintings, and prints by Taring Padi.
"Gathering Into The Maelstrom" is also the title of a four-day program that took place at Sale Docks (April 17-20, 2024). The program featured assemblies, screenings, and book launches mainly focused on art and ecology. It also included talks with Palestinian artists and participation in an action in solidarity with Palestinian people during the Israeli attack on Gaza.
Taring Padi – The Institute of People Oriented Culture Taring Padi was founded in 1998 by a group of progressive art students and activists in response to the Indonesian socio-political upheavals during the country’s reformation era. As such, Taring Padi’s artistic practice is always part of and contextualised within their socio-political and cultural solidarity and action. Street protests, woodcutting workshops, art carnivals, and exhibitions in unorthodox spaces are typical of Taring Padi’s practice of producing collective and individual works. Diverse ad hoc political alliances, farming and fishing communities, as well as their own localities are places where Taring Padi work and learn together. Banners, woodcut posters, and wayang kardus (life-sized cardboard puppets), as well as the ever popular Dendang Kampungan music group are Taring Padi’s artistic formulas to agitate, educate, and organise themselves, their community, and diverse solidarity actions they are involved in. In 2002 Taring Padi became a collective in order to further inclusivity and to facilitate personal dynamic of its members, whilst maintaining its progressive and militant character in realising the potential of art as a tool for social change.
Oliver Ressler is an artist and filmmaker who produces installations, projects in public space, and films on issues such as economics, democracy, migration, the climate crisis, forms of resistance and social alternatives. Ressler has had solo exhibitions at Berkeley Art Museum, USA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade; Centro Cultural Conde Duque, Madrid; Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum, Egypt; The Cube Project Space, Taipei; Kunsthaus Graz, Graz and comprehensive solo exhibitions at Wyspa Institute of Art, Gdansk; Lentos Kunstmuseum, Linz; Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporaneo – CAAC, Seville; SALT Galata, Istanbul; MNAC – National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest; and Cultural Centre of Belgrade.
Powernotte – Was conceived in 2020 in Venice, Italy by two artists : Davide Salmaso, Rocco Cacciari and a product manager : Giuseppe Bateato. The concept was an artisanal fusion of home design and contemporary art using the mediums of sculpture and painting. The work is an investigation of the animal world within their ecosystems. And there is special attention paid to the totemic value – even amongst the smallest. Each piece is artisanally crafted, hand-made and one of a kind. This slow production, with an attention to artistry is a pushback on the mainstream production model that harms our planet. Our products cannot be identically replicated or mass produced. They are each perfectly unique.
Climate Justice League – A generative co-creation of eco-warriors icons front for climate justice. The Climate Justice League will be present in the form of big cardboard puppets, ready to enter the street and march around the planet. The Climate Justice League has been launched by the Institute of Radical Imagination during the 2023 edition of the World Congress for Climate Justice,with the complicit participation of Andreco, Andrea Natella, Noura Tafeche, Serpica Naro and Dirty Art Department (Jerszy Seymour, Theo Dietz e Rosa Meulenbeld), Institute of Radical Imagination (Marco Baravalle, Emanuele Braga, Maddalena Fragnito, Gabriella Riccio, Federica Timeto) and Le Alleanze dei Corpi.
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