firstsite contemporary art colchester

UECLAA, Redefining Maps and Locations

12 March – 23 April 2005
UECLAA
Redefining Maps and Locations

A selection of work from the University of Essex's remarkable collection of Latin American Art (UECLAA) explores ideas of local and global, maps, spaces and places, and the ways in which these can be endlessly redefined. The exhibition celebrates the launch of UECLAA's on-line catalogue that goes global on April 22nd 2005.

Highlights include a new donation to the collection by celebrated Argentine artist Jorge Macchi's. His artist's book Buenos Aires Tour offers the starting point – we journey through a city from numerous different perspectives, but always focussing on the extraordinariness of the ordinary. Mónica Bengoa's photographs present details of human skin recalling the design of maps. Suddenly a mole takes the form of a town or city, surrounded by a network of faint roads and paths. León Ferrari also looks down on the world from above, but his spaces are architectural floor plans filled with figures and furniture existing together in nightmarishly close quarters. At another level Jaime Gili, a Venezuelan artist resident in London, uses the British people's obsession with customised number plates to construct words in Spanish, words that are taken from various Latin American National Anthems. At once we see the potential for cars tracing routes through London, Colchester and other UK cities announcing their non-Englishness!

Travel with these varied interpretations, employing a range of media and approaches, to consider how globalisation can stimulate constant redefinitions of the spaces and places around us.

For further information please visit www.essex.ac.uk/ueclaa

	UECLAA, Redefining Maps and Locations 12 March – 23 April 2005 UECLAA Redefining Maps and Locations A selection of work from the University of Essex's remarkable collection of Latin American Art (UECLAA) explores ideas of local and global, maps, spaces and places, and the ways in which these can be endlessly redefined. The exhibition celebrates the launch of UECLAA's on-line catalogue that goes global on April 22nd 2005. Highlights include a new donation to the collection by celebrated Argentine artist Jorge Macchi's. His artist's book Buenos Aires Tour offers the starting point – we journey through a city from numerous different perspectives, but always focussing on the extraordinariness of the ordinary. Mónica Bengoa's photographs present details of human skin recalling the design of maps. Suddenly a mole takes the form of a town or city, surrounded by a network of faint roads and paths. León Ferrari also looks down on the world from above, but his spaces are architectural floor plans filled with figures and furniture existing together in nightmarishly close quarters. At another level Jaime Gili, a Venezuelan artist resident in London, uses the British people's obsession with customised number plates to construct words in Spanish, words that are taken from various Latin American National Anthems. At once we see the potential for cars tracing routes through London, Colchester and other UK cities announcing their non-Englishness! Travel with these varied interpretations, employing a range of media and approaches, to consider how globalisation can stimulate constant redefinitions of the spaces and places around us. For further information please visit www.essex.ac.uk/ueclaa