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Installation view, Round and Around (2021), Courtesy the artist and Korean Cultural Centre UK. Photograph by Dan Weill
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Installation view, Round and Around (2021), Courtesy the artist and Korean Cultural Centre UK. Photograph by Dan Weill
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Installation view, Round and Around (2021), Courtesy the artist and Korean Cultural Centre UK. Photograph by Dan Weill
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Installation view, Round and Around (2021), Courtesy the artist and Korean Cultural Centre UK. Photograph by Dan Weill
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Installation view, Round and Around (2021), Courtesy the artist and Korean Cultural Centre UK. Photograph by Dan Weill
Exhibition
Round and Around
27 Sep 2021 – 22 Oct 2021
Regular hours
- Monday
- 10:00 – 17:30
- Tuesday
- 10:00 – 17:30
- Wednesday
- 10:00 – 17:30
- Thursday
- 10:00 – 17:30
- Friday
- 10:00 – 17:30
Address
- Ground Floor, Grand Buildings
- 1-3 Strand
- London
- WC2N 5BW
- United Kingdom
Travel Information
- Nearest tube: Charing Cross or Embankment
- Charing Cross
[Round and Around] Audio-Visual Project by Jang Minseung and Jung Jaeil
About
The Korean Cultural Centre UK is pleased to present Round and Around, an Audio-Visual Project by Jang Minseung, artist & film director and Jung Jaeil, composer & musician, as part of the KCCUK Autumn exhibition programme. Premiering for the first time outside of Korea, this exhibition provides a deep insight into the modern history of Korea.
2020 marked the 40th anniversary of the May 18 Gwangju Democratisation Movement (1980), and to commemorate this anniversary Round and Around is centred around a series of historical moments that stood out during 1980s Korea. In collaboration with the Korean Film Archive, Jang collected and reconstructed archive images and footage juxtaposing the newly created sequence of monumental places in Korea. By taking non-linear axes of time and space, this project unveils the moments of development, demolition, and resistance in Korea between Gwangju in May 1980 to the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games.
The visual messages in Round and Around are further incorporated with music composed by Jung Jaeil, music director of the Award-winning movie, Parasite. Composed of choral a cappella, electronic sound and string ensembles, Jung creates magnificent music inspired by the Psalms. The sound plays an important element in this project, connecting texts, images, and audio in an organic way whilst staging a powerful ambience.
The title, Round and Around draws upon the cycle of history that seems to repeat beyond time and space, and at the same time illuminating the endlessness of both despair and hope. The legacy and spirit of the May 18 Gwangju Democratisation Movement fighting against authoritarianism in Korea, are all pertinent to the world where we are standing now. Be it suffering from oppression, political turbulence and even the global threat to human survival through the pandemic, audiences to this exhibition face a manifestation of both the past and the present.
For this London presentation, Jang adopts the form of an exhibition by repositioning the project into a gallery space using video, sound and installations. Despite having previously been showcased in various theatres and cinemas in Korea, this project will for the first time be implemented as a gallery space exhibition.
