Overlay
Project description
Overlay is an exhibition bringing together new works by Cathy Haynes, Hannah Lees, Zoë Paul and Claire Potter alongside a historic work by American artist Nancy Holt (1938–2014). The exhibition responds to the 10th Tokyo Biennale, Between Man and Matter, curated by Yusuke Nakahara and presented at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Gallery in 1970 before touring Japan.
Between Man and Matter brought together important Conceptual, Minimalist and Arte Povera artists from Europe and North America with Japanese artists who would become associated with the movement known as mono-ha, or the “School of Things”. Its central concern with materiality and the relationship between objects and the world also reflected the predominantly male perspective of the period: none of its forty-one participating artists was a woman.
Overlay offers a modest and belated response to that landmark exhibition, revisiting its concerns through contemporary practices that engage with material, time, place and the natural world. Its title is borrowed from feminist art critic Lucy R. Lippard’s influential 1983 book Overlay: Contemporary Art and the Art of Prehistory, which explored connections between Land Art, sculpture and prehistoric forms such as megaliths and hill drawings.
Lippard’s book considered how contemporary sculptural practices and forms of activism could be understood alongside ancient sites and ritual objects, particularly those associated with ideas of nature, femininity and the goddess. Overlay extends this proposition into the present, considering how material and environmental relationships might be approached without reproducing the assumptions of earlier generations.
Nancy Holt’s inclusion is particularly significant. Her Trail Markers series was made in 1969 on Dartmoor during a visit with her husband, artist Robert Smithson. The photographs demonstrate Holt’s sensitivity to material, time and place and offer a connection to the wider concerns of the 10th Tokyo Biennale. Her absence from that exhibition, despite the inclusion of contemporaries such as Carl Andre and Richard Serra, provides the historical context for her inclusion in Overlay.
The contemporary artists share Holt’s interest in material and its active relationship to time and place, while approaching these questions from distinctly contemporary perspectives. Their works explore chance, transformation, artificiality and the uncertain relationship between human beings and the natural world, resisting fixed assumptions about gender, landscape and materiality.
Rather than attempting to recreate the 1970 exhibition, Overlay considers what its themes might mean from a contemporary perspective. The works suggest provisional relationships between material, body, landscape and time, creating points of connection between the historical exhibition and the artistic practices of the present.
Bio
Nancy Holt (1938–2014) was an American artist whose pioneering practice encompassed sculpture, photography, film, installation and site-specific works. Closely associated with the Land Art movement, she explored perception, light, space, time and the relationship between human experience and the landscape. Her work often transforms natural and architectural environments into frameworks for observing the movement of light, the horizon and the passage of time.
Holt’s major works include Sun Tunnels (1973–76), Dark Star Park (1979–84) and Electrical System (1982), and her work has been exhibited internationally at institutions including the Dia Art Foundation, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Tate and Museum of Modern Art, New York. Her inclusion in Overlay brings her 1969 series Trail Markers into dialogue with a younger generation of artists and retrospectively acknowledges her place within the artistic conversations surrounding the 10th Tokyo Biennale.
Project details
Year: 2016
Exhibition: Overlay
Artists: Cathy Haynes; Nancy Holt; Hannah Lees; Zoë Paul; Claire Potter
Curated by: Jeremy Millar
Reference exhibition: The 10th Tokyo Biennale: Between Man and Matter
Advisor: Keith Whittle
Publication: Exhibition publication with artist conversation, reference and installation photographs
Country: United Kingdom