This catalogue accompanies Ikon’s exhibition by Turner Prize 2009 nominee Roger Hiorns. The catalogue features a selection of images from the artist’s archive work Digestive System (1998-ongoing) alongside his recent works.
This catalogue includes an essay by Ruth Noack, art historian and co-curator of documenta 12 in Kassel.
Through the transformation of materials and found objects, Roger Hiorns (b. Birmingham 1975) focuses on various aspects of modern life, closely analysing what is assumed or taken for granted. His works involve foaming assemblages of manufactured machine parts, paintings made from brain matter – an exploration of the origins of the disease vCJD – jet engines containing anti depressant drugs and naked young men both painted and in the flesh. Hiorns has recently made canvases covered with copper sulphate. Delicate works of art, untouched by him, they are at once beautiful and problematising. There is a kind of instability embodied in them that epitomises his artistic practice as a whole.
The exhibition also includes a new video work documenting Untitled (a retrospective view of the pathway), an off-site project produced by Ikon in June 2016. It features choristers of St Philip’s Cathedral Birmingham singing Evensong whilst lying on their backs on the floor of the nave, rather than standing to sing in stalls in front of the altar. A re-imagining of an ancient ritual, atomising a rigid formation, it exemplifies a restlessness with respect to a revered institution, part of an establishment that defines our society. |