October 4th, 2011
Franziska Furter: stray currents
Towner, 8 October 2011 – 2 January 2012 (free)
This weekend celebrates the opening of award-winning contemporary art museum Towner’s new exhibition, with Swiss artist Franziska Furter making her first solo show in a UK public gallery.
Towner has commissioned Furter to make a series of sophisticated new conceptual works that include graphite drawings and ephemeral sculptural works, forming an ambitious installation that fills the 400 m2 Exhibition Gallery space.
Weather has long captured Furter’s imagination. Two of Furter’s solo shows in Paris in 2010 took their names from climatic conditions: bow echo and squall lines, and this exhibition continues to reflect Furter’s relationship with weather.
Eastbourne Borough Council Cabinet Member for Tourism and Leisure Cllr Neil Stanley said “We are absolutely delighted to have commissioned Furter to produce this new body of work, which is designed specifically to suit Towner and our exhibition space. Having seen Furter’s work in other galleries, we were sure that she would respond well to our vast gallery space and produce an ambitious installation that transforms it once again.
“With this being Furter’s first solo show in a UK public gallery, we are very excited to debut the artist in this country and hope that visitors will be just as pleased by what they see.”
The free exhibition, on until 2 January 2012, will offer visitors the chance to browse a range of works including new piece Kamikaze (literal translation: divine wind), a wire mesh installation from very thin silver wire. The installation is almost invisible from a certain perspective, yet may appear like a shiny landscape or glowing snakeskin from another vantage.
Spread across the gallery, other works stand on plinths, occupy the floor, grace the walls or hover, suspended in the space itself. The contrast of their aggressive appearance and extreme fragility makes a strong statement against Towner’s semi-industrial architecture.
The scale of Towner’s Exhibition Gallery – the largest Furter has exhibited in as a solo artist – both drove the new body of work and presented a challenge that allowed her to extend her practice in new directions. For Furter, the space is as much a part of the exhibition as the installation.
Towner is grateful to Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, the Swiss Cultural Fund in Britain, Abteilung Kultur Basel-Stadt and kulturelles.bl for their support of this exhibition.
For more information on the exhibition, opening this Saturday 8 October, go to the website or call 01323 434670.
