Collaboration Peter Hill and J.J. Voss (Photographer)
T H E C H A N G I N G R O O M
NEW GALLERY SPACE ANNOUNCED
The Museum is pleased to announce the opening of a new gallery space specialising in
exhibitions and events put on at short notice in response to burgeoning young talent
or to immediate political and cultural events. With a think-tank of advisers and freelance
curators to draw upon the new space, to be called THE CHANGING ROOM, will be able to react
within hours to current events, bringing the deadline tensions of the newsroom and the
pressures of the press office, to the presentation of art and ideas.
Said Museum director Dr Sunday Anderson, "While continuing to mount exhibitions which
may take years of preparation in other parts of the Museum, this new space, which at
141 ft x 66ft (4cm x 18m) takes up only one twentieth of our total exhibition space,
will set out to challenge the supremacy of the so-called blockbuster show. Without wishing
to be too critical of fellaw directors I think it is widely felt that vast exhibitions
such as the recent Bilderstreit in Cologne and Magiciens de la Terre in Parls suffer
from over-planning and too long a gestation period. They lack the tension that is born
of immediacy. THE CHANGING ROOM aims to challenge accepted ways of curating as was done
in very different ways by Chambres d'Amis and "Skulpturen Republik."
EXHIBITIONS
The program commences with TO GET RICH IS GLORIOUS.
TO GET RICH IS GLORIOUS
This exhibition centers on PROPAGANDA, both intentional and unintentional,
and takes its title from a statement made by Deng Xiaoping in the early eighties -
TO GET RICH IS GLORIOUS. By contrast his June 9th speech which melded economic
liberalism with political orthodoxy, and made five da,vs after the Tiananmen
Square massacre (although not televised in China until the end of that month),
spoke of PLAIN LIVING and set out a seventy year program to promote the new philosophy.
This exhibition takes as its central theme PROPAGANDA in 20th century China through wall
posters and woodcuts upto the present day and the manipulation of the truth throughradio
and television as happened most recently in the aftermath of the democracy demonstrations.
The counterbalancing efftct of satellite broadcasts into the country, and direct
transmissions from Hong Kong, is also explored.
Other aspects of propaganda are examined, from the influtnce of the church and the
spread of Christianity through to the present day fanatacism of certain Islamic sects
and the propagation of their faith. First world equivalents are also examined through
the media and advertising in particular.
Ten young New York artists were invited to respond to the theme of the exhibition by
Thomas Chalmers, assistant curator Department of Painting in collaboration with Cologne
critic Ingrid Franke. Their works include video, performance, painting, mixed media and
sculpture.
Invited artists: Jenny Thomas, Guy Dassin, Jill Jackson, Nancy Adrienne Anthony,
Dianne McGinnis, Victor Corliss, Jim Carolan, Gregory Wilding, Evans and Wolf, and Marco
Haarlem.
PRESS PHOTOGRAPHS AVAILABLE
