What weakens the flesh is the flesh itself, 2017.
(Image: James Richards and Steve Reinke)
When: Until 26th May 2018
Where: Chapter, Market Road, Canton, Cardiff, Wales CF5 1QE
£: Admission free
What is it?
Commissioned for the Venice Biennale in 2017, James Richards’ exhibition, Migratory Motor Complex, heads to Chapter in Cardiff for its UK premiere.
Richards’ exhibition presents a suite of works, including Migratory Motor Complex (2017), a six-channel electro-acoustic installation that explores the capacity of sound to render artificial spaces and locate sonic and melodic events within them.
Woven throughout the piece are re-occurring vocal and musical motifs that have been developed in collaboration with Kirsten Evans and Samuel Williams, students from the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. The work is tuned in situ, with Richards reacting to the acoustic contingencies of the space, creating a cinematic and multi-sensory experience.
Also featured is What weakens the flesh is the flesh itself (2017), a video made with collaborator Steve Reinke. The starting point for the work is a series of images found in the private archive of Albrecht Becker; a production designer, photographer and actor imprisoned by the Nazis for being homosexual.
Amongst pictures of friends and photographs taken whilst serving in World War II is a collection of staged self-portraits that reveal an obsessive commitment to body modification, tattooing and his own image: duplicated, repeated and reworked with collage and darkroom revision. This extraordinary collection of images serves as the backbone for the video; an extended meditation on the archive, photography and the body.
The exhibition will also include Mercy Mercy Mercy, a film programme compiled and edited by the artist, and featuring works by mostly British pioneers of video art. Parallel to working on his own films, Richards draws inspiration from collaborations with other artists, his interactions with contemporary art and recent art history, and from curating film programmes and exhibitions.
More info: www.chapter.org