Exhibition
Signs of Id
11 Nov 2016 – 27 Nov 2016
Regular hours
- Friday
- 09:00 – 17:00
- Saturday
- 09:00 – 17:00
- Sunday
- 10:00 – 16:00
- Thursday
- 09:00 – 17:00
Cost of entry
free
Address
- Gravesend Town Pier Pontoon
- West Street
- Gravesend
England - DA11 0BG
- United Kingdom
Travel Information
- Gravesend Railway Station - fast train 20 min from St Pancras
A historic Light Vessel on the Thames is the venue for the latest emotive installation by artistic duo Furst and Ori exploring themes of danger, fear, control and manipulative science.
About
Signs of Id, which opens in November, takes visitors on a journey into the bowels of LV21, a 40 metre lightship moored at Gravesend which has found a new life as an arts and performance centre since being decommissioned.
Sergei Furst and Francesca Ori, have used the function of LV21 as a warning of impending danger to inform their new installation, integrating their works into the machinery and hidden spaces of the ship.
"The interconnected series of works present our obsessive pursuit of scientific truths as Conradian voyages into darkness," says Furst.
Video by guest artist Dan Wootton and sounds by Berlin-based electronic composer Alberto Yusta embellish the discourse.
In the gutted engine room at the heart of the boat two short installation films are projected into large air compression chambers. In Leaving Rats on a Sinking Ship, Furst weaves a fictional narrative around the crowding experiments using rat populations run by John B. Calhoun in the 1960s. In Emotional Illiteracy Ori simulates the manipulation of emotions for behavioural ends, and highlights the increasing use of fear as a social tool.
Sergei Furst and Francesca Ori began their collaboration as artists when they founded a joint studio in a sugar factory in Granada, Spain, more than 10 years ago and since then have exhibited in Spain, Italy and England. Ori, originally from Sicily, studied fine art at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Catania. Sergei Furst, a British artist, began his career with the controversial cartoon strip Rubric for the Times.
They received an Elephant Trust Award and the exhibition is supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Art Council England.