Boards
Bored of gigs? Come see my friends' ballet
Pil and Galia Kollectiv – Asparagus: A Horticultural Ballet
7 March to 15 April 2007 (gallery closed 6 to 9 April)
Wednesday to Sunday 13.00 to 18.00hrs
Off-site performance with Les Georges Leningrad – 6 March, Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, WC1 (Holborn tube), 21.00hrs
Tickets are £5 and are available on the door and in advance from The Showroom. Please send cheques made payable to ‘The Showroom Ltd.’ to: The Showroom, 44 Bonner Road, London E2 9JS
The Showroom is delighted to announce the first solo show in London by the collaborative partnership Pil and Galia Kollectiv. The Kollectivs work across a number of disciplines, but their primary medium is film and video. For The Showroom, they will present a gallery-based exhibition launched by a special one-off performance of Asparagus: A Horticultural Ballet at Conway Hall, featuring live music by the acclaimed Les Georges Leningrad from Montréal.
Asparagus: A Horticultural Ballet is a live performance piece inspired by rumour and myth. In the late 1970s, while still a student, Waw Pierogi, later of an obscure New Jersey minimal synth band xex, composed the interdisciplinary Asparagus: A Horticultural Ballet. No documentation of the piece exists, but Pil and Galia Kollectiv have become fascinated by this work, alongside another lost work, Oskar Schlemmer’s Triadic Ballet. The Kollectivs’ desire is not to recreate either, but rather they are intrigued by the possibilities of making a new work through the collision of ideas left behind by former art movements and other cultural phenomena. For them unrealised, forgotten and failed revolutions are as much a legacy of modernism as the utopian belief in progress that we have inherited.
Originally from Jerusalem, Israel, Pil and Galia Kollectiv moved to London to study on the Goldsmiths MA course. The couple work collaboratively as artists, writers, independent curators and lecturers: in London they have curated and been involved in a number of group projects including Modern Lovers at Three Colts Gallery, Turn to the Left at 291 Gallery and Diamonds for Workers at Kate MacGarry.
Les Georges Leningrad are Montréal’s preeminent art-punks, blending dub, disco, post-punk and no-wave to create an aesthetic form that demolishes the lines between music presentation and promotion.
Conway Hall is a landmark of London's independent intellectual, political and cultural life. It is home to the Ethical Society, where it fosters freedom in moral and spiritual life and thought.
Bill Drummond, co-founder of The KLF and the K Foundation, will give a free talk on the Kollectivs’ work at The Showroom on Saturday 17 March at 15.00hrs.
For further information please contact Shama Khanna on 020 8983 4115, or refer to the gallery’s website www.theshowroom.org.
The Showroom is financially assisted by Arts Council England, The Moose Foundation for the Arts and the many members of the gallery’s Friends Scheme. Asparagus: A Horticultural Ballet is supported by the Québec Government Office, London.