Exhibition

Testament

21 Jan 2022 – 3 Apr 2022

Regular hours

Monday
Closed
Tuesday
10:00 – 18:00
Wednesday
10:00 – 18:00
Thursday
10:00 – 18:00
Friday
10:00 – 18:00
Saturday
10:00 – 18:00
Sunday
10:00 – 18:00

Save Event: Testament41

I've seen this7

People who have saved this event:

close

Travel Information

  • 21 - 47 - 53 - 136 - 171 - 172 - 177 - 188 - 321 - 436 - 453
  • New Cross Gate Overground Station - New Cross Overground Stations
  • New Cross Gate Station - New Cross Station
Directions via Google Maps Directions via Citymapper
Event map

Testament is a large-scale group exhibition across the entirety of the CCA building, staged in response to this tumultuous period.

About

Artists: Saelia Aparicio, Phyllida Barlow, Alvaro Barrington, JJ Chan, Monster Chetwynd, Rabiya Choudhry, Jeremy Deller, Adham Faramawy, Navine G Khan-Dossos, Ryan Gander, Carl Gent, Holly Hendry, Roger Hiorns, Sam Keogh, Scott King, Phillip Lai, Lawrence Lek, Ghislaine Leung, Lloyd Corporation, Paul Maheke, Stuart Middleton, Oscar Murillo, Nashashibi/Skaer, Olu Ogunnaike, Hardeep Pandhal, Yuri Pattison, Elizabeth Price, Laure Prouvost, Aaron Ratajczyk, Tanoa Sasraku, SERAFINE1369, Tai Shani, Peter Spanjer, Jay Tan, Tenant of Culture, Edward Thomasson, Jala Wahid, Isabel Waidner, Mark Wallinger, Dominic Watson, Alfie White, Gray Wielebinski, Bedwyr Williams, Cerith Wyn Evans, Zadie Xa & Benito Mayor Vallejo, Abbas Zahedi.

As the UK navigates seismic shifts triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement, environmental crises and Brexit, the role of monuments has been brought into sharp focus, becoming the centre of public debate. Testament is a large-scale group exhibition across the entirety of the CCA building, staged in response to this tumultuous period.

Artists have been invited to make proposals that consider what is at stake in tearing down and erecting monuments, and what it might mean to rethink the idea of the monument. Are they defunct, illusory statements of permanence, continuity, and manifestations of power? Whose narratives do they preserve, and whose do they suppress? Can they still play a vital role in mediating communal grief and providing a locus for memory? Is there space for them to be re-envisioned?

The exhibition features ‘proposal’ artworks by 46 artists, including those who are either resident in the UK, and those who are abroad but hold an understanding of the UK’s complex relationship with the past and present. Their contributions unambiguously or indirectly address the idea of a monument, or allude to the treatment of monuments in the UK in 2022, and seek to magnify a multitude of conversations, from discussions about decolonising institutions, fallism, dislocation, memorialising, remembering and forgetting, to our current relationship with history, along with some intimate and personal responses. Submissions incorporate notes and sketches, drawings, poems, instructions, installations, sculptures, paintings, films, performances, and text, and include critical and celebratory positions and conversations about coping and surviving, ranging from the individual to the universal, and the local to the national.

Comments

Have you been to this event? Share your insights and give it a review below.