PrintThe Bloomberg Commission - Goshka Macuga
The former library's central reading room is a richly historic space filled with natural light which gives a new platform for an annual art commission.
The Bloomberg Commission launches with Goshka Macuga, who has created a new site specific artwork inspired by Picasso's Guernica coming to the Whitechapel Gallery in 1939 on its first and only visit to the UK. It invites a living international artist to create a year-long site specific artwork inspired by the history and architecture of the former library in which it is sited.
2008 Turner Prize nominated artist Goshka Macuga is an avid collector of objects and is fascinated with history as a fertile ground for ideas. Playing with conventions of display she combines disparate materials to create surprising and unexpected relationships that explore their social, political, spiritual and aesthetic significance.
Goshka's Macuga's installations often take as their starting point social and artistic networks that share ideals. For The Bloomberg Commission she will look at the moment when Picasso?s Guernica was exhibited at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1939, exploring the great Spanish Civil War painting as a political icon and tracing its evolving significance since it was painted in 1938.
Forming the centre piece of the installation will be a life-size tapestry replica of Guernica, which Picasso gave two Parisian weavers permission to produce in the 1950s as the Guernica painting itself was becoming too fragile to travel. Currently hanging at the UN headquarters in New York, the Guernica tapestry will form part of Goshka Macuga?s commission.
The Whitechapel Gallery?s exhibition of Guernica in 1939 was organised in collaboration with the Stepney Trade Union Council in east London to raise funds for and awareness of the Spanish Civil War. While on show at the Whitechapel Gallery the painting acted as a focal point for a number of speeches and rallies. Clement Attlee, MP for Limehouse and leader of the Labour Party made the opening speech. Visitors were asked to donate a pair of boots, and by the end of the exhibition some 400 pairs were collected to send to the troops. Many visitors to the exhibition enlisted as a result and went to fight in Spain.
Goshka Macuga?s commission will explore the relationship between art and propaganda, and also instigate a network of actions involving speakers, curators, designers and political activists, who will use the Gallery as a platform for debate throughout the year-long commission.
The Bloomberg Commission aims to: provide important emerging and established artists with their first major site-specific commission; provide a central focus for the programme of the expanded Whitechapel Gallery; present a major series of art works for a year; enable the Whitechapel Gallery?s London-wide, national and international audiences to benefit from a long-term engagement with a new artwork.
As a leading global financial information services company that has made its mark by championing innovation, Bloomberg is deeply committed to education and creativity, and to expanding access to art, science and the humanities. Through support of educational and cultural institutions worldwide, Bloomberg fosters a broad range of creative initiatives - from exhibitions and audio tour programmes to student fellowships and public art installations - that promote public awareness and appreciation of the arts.
Notes for Editors
- Born in 1967 in Poland, Goshka Macuga currently lives and works in London. She studied at Wojciech Gerson School of Art, Warsaw before moving to the UK to study at Central Saint Martins School of Art, London and Goldsmiths College, London. Her solo exhibitions include Galerri Foksal, Warsaw and Transmission Gallery, Glasgow, 2002; Gasworks, London, 2003; Sleep of Ulro, The Furnace Commission, A Foundation, Liverpool, 2006; Objects in Relation, Art Now, Tate Britain, 2007; and Kunsthalle Basel, forthcoming in 2009. Among her group exhibitions are The British Art Show, touring the UK in 2005 and 2006; 27th S?o Paulo Biennial, Sao Paulo, 2006; 5th Berlin Biennial, Neue Nationalgaleries, Berlin, and The Great Transformation: Art and Tactical Magic, Frankfurter Kunstverein and touring, both 2008. In 2008 Goshka Macuga was also nominated for the Turner Prize.
- The Bloomberg Commission ? Goshka Macuga is curated by Anthony Spira, Curator, Whitechapel Gallery.
- There will be a publication to accompany the commission.
- The Bloomberg Commission is supported by Bloomberg, The Henry Moore Foundation, The Adam Mickiewicz Institute, The Polish Cultural Insitute, and the Wingate Scholarships.