And Europe Will Be Stunned
Curated by Peter Richards, featuring artist: Yael Bartana
Yael Bartana’s deeply stirring and contentious film trilogy And Europe Will Be Stunned is both of its time and ahead of it. Bypassing cliché, this bold and subversive project explores propaganda, longing and migration through an uneasy fusion of fiction and reality that is hard to untangle. Experiencing all three films in a gallery environment gives us a space to contemplate and question the human dilemmas that shape the world we inhabit.
The tension that runs through each carefully structured frame, choreographed image and rousing call to action is echoed in some of the reviews:
“Consisting primarily of a video trilogy, it is at once sombre, provocative and superbly well done, with a strangely perfect, perfectly disturbing, yet ineffably wry confusion of ideology, geography, propaganda and history.”
Roberta Smith, New York Times
The gallery’s 2016/17 programme has concentrated on juxtaposition and the role of place in the context of urban environment. Following on from these themes will be a focus on the mediated story. While Northern Ireland is a key example of how stories and histories change and evolve under the glare of media scrutiny, in an increasingly international world examples are all too copious. We will also focus on the concept of operating under a spotlight/ under the shadow of a spotlight. How do you escape your past when your present is constantly being monitored?
Golden Thread Gallery’s artistic vision is engaged with the fluidity of history and the multiplicity of points of view. The programme investigates how moments in time can have an irrevocable impact on perspective. Our surroundings shape how we read meaning: an event can be something or nothing depending on where it occurs or what we have previously experienced.
This exhibition is in association with Artangel, London. The trilogy And Europe Will Be Stunned is part of the Artangel collection.
Yael Bartana’s “Zamach” is part of The Artangel Collection, an initiative to bring outstanding film and video works, commissioned and produced by Artangel, to galleries and museums across the UK. The Artangel Collection has been developed in partnership with Tate, is generously supported by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and The Foyle Foundation and uses public funding from Arts Council England.
Image Credits: Yael Bartana, Zamach (Assassination), 2011, video still, courtesy of Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam, and Sommer Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv.
Yael Bartana Interview: Returning 3,3 Million Jews to Poland