Crosscurrents Armenia I London presents the work of three British-based artists who have drawn from their experiences of Armenia to explore the role of landscape in cultural memory.
‘Each artist here engages in a process of reconstructing landscape from its traces. Sarkissian’s Windows evoke a wistful, partially remembered, perhaps romanticised past; Chatto’s ceramics allow the organic materials at the heart of the medium to once again exert their natural tendencies; and Ekserdjian’s overlaid drawings and paintings composite together different forms of remembering and experiencing landscape. In both Sarkissian and Ekserdjian’s work we can trace the path of the arm of the artist in the process of mark-making, while in Chatto’s torquing motion, his whole body is implicated in the contorted spirals of his ceramics. Imagination is an active and subjective process, and each of these three artists, with their diverse biographies and relationships to the Armenian landscape at stake here, place themselves into the landscapes being imagined. ’
This exhibition places these different perspectives and their outcomes in dialogue, reflecting on our experiences of place and belonging in a connected, but loss-filled, world. It opens the possibility for the viewer to reflect on their own sense of identity, the role of landscape in cultural memory, and on their own or others' experiences of migration and the diaspora.
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Catalogue Essay by Harry Weeks
