Nicosia, Cyprus. The Objects are Watching, a new solo exhibition by London-based artist Clare Burnett, opens at Art Seen in Nicosia this Thursday and runs until the end of May. The show is curated by Maria Stathi and includes a commissioned text by Pavlina Paraskevaidou.
Exhibition focus
According to Paraskevaidou’s accompanying text, Burnett’s work responds to people, places and histories, unravelling narratives and associations across different times and landscapes. The text says past and present are intertwined through colour, form and material into objects that reflect the movement of people.
Research and materials
Paraskevaidou writes that Burnett’s research for the exhibition included studying the Cyprus Collections at Neues Museum in Berlin and the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, and travelling around the island to learn from people and observe the surroundings. The text adds that Burnett visits Nicosia’s supermarkets, travels to remote mountain locations to find the copper mine and Red Lake of Mitsero, and digs in the buffer zone, collecting materials incorporated into her work.
Minerals, oxides, clay and earth are used by the artist to make pigments, fabric, paper pulp and plastic, which appear in drawings, sculptures and ceramics, according to the text.
Themes and artworks
The exhibition includes clay sculptures, contemporary works, watercolours and other forms. It explores how objects journey across time, geography and history, tracing displacement, excavation and restitution, and juxtaposes ancient forms with everyday contemporary materials in a reflection on memory, material culture and layered narratives.
Series and approach to value
Paraskevaidou writes that Burnett dismisses hierarchies of value, treating plastic, paper and clay as equal to other materials. The text describes the series The Objects are Watching as a stack of bowls, buckets and other readily available plastic objects under layers of papier-mâché, reconfigured into anthropomorphic sculptures.
The text characterises the works as standing like totems of contemporary consumerism or harbingers of ecological disaster, and includes Burnett’s statement that “today’s everyday plastics bear witness,” watching over actions and lives until they become the archaeology of the future.
Dates and visiting information
The exhibition runs from April 23 to May 27 at Art Seen, Nicosia, with an opening from 6pm to 9.30pm. Visiting hours are Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 4pm to 7pm, and Saturday from 11am to 1pm, or by appointment. An opportunity to meet the artist and join a guided exhibition tour is available this Saturday at 11.30am.
Will you attend the guided exhibition tour with the artist this Saturday at 11.30am?
