Anathemata

About

Antonin Artaud, Martin Bladh, Pierre Guyotat, Paul-Alexandre Islas, David Jones, Sarah Kane, James Richards, Karolina Urbaniak

Curated by Pierre-Alexandre Mateos and Charles Teyssou.

Anathemata is a display that interrogates the tradition of epic poetry within a tetrad of 20th century avant-garde artists; David Jones, Antonin Artaud, Sarah Kane and Pierre Guyotat. These four artists are presented alongside contemporary artists Martin Bladh, Paul-Alexandre Islas, James Richards and Karolina Urbaniak interlaced through a display of manuscripts, drawings and videos, and presented alongside contemporary artists Martin Bladh, Paul-Alexandre Islas, and Karolina Urbaniak. 

The exhibition title is borrowed from David Jones’s eponymous poem published in 1952. A British poet and artist of Welsh descent, Jones is considered a leading figure within modernist poetry along with James Joyce and T. S. Eliot. His poem, The Anathemata, investigates the importance of mythology within the history of humanity from a modernist perspective. Written in the aftermath of the Second World War and interweaving Welsh and English late medieval sources, it defends the importance of epic narratives, fables and myths against the desacralising effect of modernism. In this text, Jones also stresses the importance of the artist as an inventor and bearer of myths.

Supported by the Institut Français UK, Fluxus Arts Projects and The Moondance Foundation. 

Image: Martin Bladh, After Rembrandt's The Blinding of Samson, 1636, 2014. Courtesy the artist.