24/10/2024
Please read. Anya Gallaccio is the artist to be commissioned to deliver The AIDS Memorial in London.
https://hyperallergic.com/959741/anya-gallaccio-organic-mementos-mori-turner-contemporary/
“Anya Gallaccio’s Organic Mementos Mori
The artist reminds us that decay is full of energy — not just an ending, but part of an endless circle of life.
MARGATE, England — I can smell Anya Gallaccio’s exhibition at Turner Contemporary before I even walk in. I’m visiting in the second week of the show, but decay has already set in. Along one long wall, hundreds of fresh red flowers are pressed between plexiglass panes. They are already dusted with mold, and some have withered and slipped from glass to floor. Nearby, sheets of aluminum foil coat a swath of the ground. On the surface sit dozens of white pillar candles, some burning, others blown out by the breezes raised by visitors moving around the space. Each day, as they burn into a pile of melted wax, they are replaced and relit. Slowly, a textured organic landscape of wax will build up.
Following my nose, I move into the second space of the exhibition, in which dozens of fresh apples have been threaded through hanging strings of twine. The piece is titled “Falling from grace” (2000/24). A week into the exhibition, they smell comfortably autumnal and cidery, but I can imagine that a rotting, fermenting odor will arrive soon. In the next room is the showstopper of Gallaccio’s practice: The entirety of a 100-plus-year-old ash tree that has been cut up, brought indoors, and reassembled with wires and bolts. The tree, which was dying from ash dieback disease, had already been marked for felling. This work, like several in the exhibition, is a restaging of Gallaccio’s previous installations, which have since rotted away.”
AIDS Memory UK
