Aby Warburg's art theory epic Mnemosyne Atlas isn't the top of most people's reading list. Thankfully, it was at the top of artist Jeremy Millar's. When he mentioned it to choreographer Siobhan Davies, she revisited the Atlas' colourful pages, and was moved to use them as the basis for her latest performance.
Held in The Curve gallery, which arches around the Barbican Centre's ground floor, the exhibition draws on Warburg's practise of collecting symbolic images from different times and places, discovering hidden connections between them. Davies applies this idea by linking the work of an eclectic bunch of contemporary artists and performers, including Millar, conceptual artist Efrosini Protopapa, and London-based design duo Glithero. The performance is an extension of Davies' contribution to Doug Aitkin's epic 'Station-to-Station: A 30-Day Happening' which took place at the Barbican in the summer of 2015.
Siobhan Davies Dance material rearranged for the Barbican's Curve gallery.
Davies was keen to discover how a group of artists could interact within the same space. 'This is why I wanted artists of different disciplines to work together,' she explains. 'I wanted us to inhabit a gallery, making choices, while allowing the audience to make their own choices too.'
Indeed, the audience can move and interact in whichever way they please - in shoulder-brushing proximity to the dancers. Dressed in everyday clothes, the dancers blend into the audience, before slipping into abstract flourishes of movement. They manoeuvrer between screens and movable walls, upon which a live-stream of films and photographs of the dancers are projected. These screens serve to divide the curved gallery, making the audience curious to see what's happening concurrently, just around the corner.
Installation view of ’Datum’, by Glithero, 2017.
Tim Simpson and Sarah van Gameren of Glithero open and close the show with their 'plumb bobs' - created specifically for the installation. These weighted, tapered silver ornaments are suspended from the ceiling by string, causing a pendulum-like focal point for the dancers to work around, enhanced by a moody, metronomic backing track. Davies explains how keen she was to have the duo on board. 'They're an extraordinary pair,' she says. 'They see dancing as drawing.'
But here they decided to take it one step further still. They said, 'why not literally make a mark in the space?' In response to this, Davies and her dance partner delicately skirt across the gallery's curved wall, tracing a parabolic line of chalk on the floor as they go. Although you don't realise it until the end, the two pendulums are being visually linked by this dusty line. The result is intriguingly therapeutic.
’Datum’, by Glithero, 2017.
In an age when we're seeing a lift in the quality of design-dance collaborations (think Wayne McGregor, OMA and Rick Guest) Glithero's intimate partnership with Davies provides a unique perspective on the way performance and design can merge. When Davies was asked why she thought contemporary design was becoming increasingly integrated with dance, she replied, 'Why ever not?'
The dance company has rearranged material especially for The Curve gallery. In one performance, dancers trace a parabolic line of chalk on the floor as they move through the space
Installation view of I+I Variations on Alteroception, by Emma Smith, 2017.
Detail of I+I Variations on Alteroception, by Emma Smith, 2017.
Disputatio II, by Efrosini Protopapa
Installation view of Melancholy Mobiles, by Jeremy Millar
INFORMATION
’material / rearranged / to / be’ is on view until 28 January. For more information, visit the Barbican website
ADDRESS
The Curve
Barbican Centre
Silk Street
London EC2Y 8DS
-
We bring you all the best bits from this year’s Goodwood Festival of SpeedAs car makers switch their allegiance to the sunny West Sussex countryside as a place to showcase their wares, a new generation of sports cars were sent running up that famous hill
-
Stay at Patina Osaka for a dose of ‘transformative luxury’ in western JapanFrom nature-inspired interiors to sound-tracked cocktails and an unusually green setting, Patina Osaka is a contemporary urban escape that sets itself apart
-
12 photographers vie for Prix Pictet 2025, lenses firmly focused on sustainabilityPrix Pictet is the world’s leading award for photography and sustainability. Here’s how the 2025 shortlist responded to this cycle’s theme, ‘Storm’
-
Shop the gloriously mad inner workings of Gary Card’s brain in London’s SohoSet designer and artist Gary Card has taken over London's Plaster Store – expect chaos and some really good accessories
-
Meet the New York-based artists destabilising the boundaries of societyA new show in London presents seven young New York-based artists who are pushing against the borders between refined aesthetics and primal materiality
-
Leila Bartell’s cloudscapes are breezily distorted, a response to an evermore digital world‘Memory Fields’ is the London-based artist’s solo exhibition at Tristan Hoare Gallery (until 25 July 2025)
-
A bespoke 40m mixed-media dragon is the centrepiece of Glastonbury’s new chill-out areaNew for 2025 is Dragon's Tail – a space to offer some calm within Glastonbury’s late-night area with artwork by Edgar Phillips at its heart
-
Emerging artist Kasia Wozniak’s traditional photography techniques make for ethereal imagesWozniak’s photographs, taken with a 19th-century Gandolfi camera, are currently on show at Incubator, London
-
Vincent Van Gogh and Anselm Kiefer are in rich and intimate dialogue at the Royal Academy of ArtsGerman artist Anselm Kiefer has paid tribute to Van Gogh throughout his career. When their work is viewed together, a rich relationship is revealed
-
Alice Adams, Louise Bourgeois, and Eva Hesse delve into art’s ‘uckiness’ at The CourtauldNew exhibition ‘Abstract Erotic’ (until 14 September 2025) sees artists experiment with the grotesque
-
Get lost in Megan Rooney’s abstract, emotional paintingsThe artist finds worlds in yellow and blue at Thaddaeus Ropac London
