Join archivist and researcher Alexia Marmara as she ruminates on the objects, texts, images and scraps of material archival and modern that inspired the work in her exhibition, My Head Leaks.
Alexia Marmara, Elizabeth Báthory (2021), courtesy of the artist
[ID: dark-hued painting of a multicoloured monkey-like creature]
Doors: 7pm
Free entry
Schmutz: dirt, mud, debris, filth, soil
kammer: chamber, compartment
Schmutzkammer is a take on the precursors of our idea of modern museums: wünderkammers/cabinet of curiosities. Alexia’s schmutzkammer features curios and archival ephemera that traditional historical teachings might not have regarded as articles of virtue.
Coinciding with her exhibition at The Horse Hospital, My Head Leaks, Alexia will share photos, objects, songs, snippets from films, as well as reading texts and thoughts that teem from the schmutzkammer of her exhibition. This talk draws its inspiration from a text written by Sally O'Reilly as her introduction to Sleep of Ulro by Goshka Macuga…
'A pictorial display of cabinets of curiosities and wünderkammers would make for an illuminating animation of the surges, falterings and outright boobies of human intellectual and cultural endeavour. [...] Even now we were hung up on a lingering desire for absolute truth, although experience hints that intuition, subjectivity, chaos and confusion may be just as useful and appropriate.'