Emotional Supply Chains

The Zabludowicz Collection is pleased to present Emotional Supply Chains, an exhibition addressing the construction of identity in the digital age. Featuring 17 leading international artists and including four new commissions, all works are drawn from the Zabludowicz Collection and produced since the year 2000.

Exhibiting artists: Korakrit Arunanondchai (TH), Neïl Beloufa (FR), David Blandy (UK), David Raymond Conroy (UK), Andrea Crespo (US), Simon Denny (NZ), Aleksandra Domanović (YU), Ed Fornieles (UK), Michael Fullerton (UK), Guan Xiao (CN), Eloise Hawser (UK), Ann Hirsch (US), Pierre Huyghe (FR), Daniel Keller (US), Christopher Kulendran Thomas (UK), Seth Price (US), Frances Stark (US)

Emotional Supply Chains explores how a fluid sense of self is fabricated in our digital present via a supply chain of objects, ideas and experiences. Although we increasingly interact within 'virtual' space, this remains bound to tangible locations and circumstances. The exhibiting artists reflect on the tensions between confinement and escape, happiness and anxiety, and presence and absence. The exhibition is structured into three parts, each exploring aspects of contemporary identity: the dualities of self, the performed and networked self, and origins and renewal.

Projects inspired by dualities of self include; Simon Denny's, The Personal Effects of Kim Dotcom, 2013 (ongoing), reimagined for the Main Gallery space, Thai-born, New York-based artist Korakrit Arunanondchai’s exploration of East and West pop cultural excess and spiritual depth in his video Painting with history in a room filled with people with funny names 3, 2015, and David Raymond Conroy’s new video commission questioning the ethics of artist as tourist, created following time spent in Las Vegas as part of Zabludowicz Collection's inaugural residency programme in November/December 2015.

In 2011, fascinated by how Facebook shapes the narratives of people’s lives, Ed Fornieles produced Dorm Daze, an ambitious project enlisting 32 volunteers to enact a three month long Facebook ‘sitcom’. For this exhibition, the archive of the performance has been reconceived in a new installation and sound piece. Similarly, Frances Stark uses Instagram to communicate beyond the confines of the art world, gaining and entertaining ‘followers’ and interweaving the realities of life as artist, teacher and mother. Drawing on existing writing, Ann Hirsch has developed a new video installation reflecting on a loss of innocence both personally and for the internet more widely, as it shifted from unregulated chat rooms into branded and monitored platforms. These works have been brought together in a mapping of the evolution of social media from AOL chat and message boards to the Web 2.0 of Facebook and Instagram.

In the final section, artists examine the intersection of place and personal history. David Blandy’s installation Child of the Atom, 2010,was inspired by a family myth connecting his late grandfather, a Japanese prisoner of war, and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Aleksandra Domanović’s biography and practice are marked by the dissolution of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 2003. Twin screen video work 19:30, 2010–11, brings together imagery central to identity in her home region: an anthology of news themes from state-owned broadcast stations, and original and found footage from rave parties. Pierre Huyghe’s video One Million Kingdoms, 2001, forms part of a seminal project initiated with Philippe Parreno in 1999. Together they acquired the rights to a manga character called Annlee, with the intention of lifting a generic character out of anonymity and into the role of central protagonist in a series of international art projects. Relinquishing their rights to her in 2001, this video shows Annlee on a journey into her own vanishing.

A fully illustrated publication featuring exclusive content from each of the exhibiting artists, plus a new essay by Laurence Scott and previously unpublished poetry by Sam Riviere, will be available during the run of the show.

An extensive public programme of live events, talks and performances will take place throughout the exhibition. Affordable limited edition art works by a number of the artists in the exhibition will also be available in the gallery and online.

Emotional Supply Chains is curated by Paul Luckraft, Curator: Exhibitions, Zabludowicz Collection