The Mariner: a painted ship upon a painted ocean

Travelling group exhibition The Arts Institute, The Levinsky Gallery, University of Plymouth: 23 September – 16 November 2019 The Edge, The Andrew Brownsword Gallery, University of Bath: 24 January–21 March 2020 John Hansard Gallery, University of Southampton: TBC Inspired by one of the most influential poems in the English language, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), Mariner looks at what connects us across history and the present, from the desire to travel – to journey out and back again – to the role of intuition and imagination, the making of mistakes and the process of recovery and redemption through knowledge and understanding. Mariner presents a series of new commissions and artworks that consider the contemporary resonance of the poem. This group exhibition brings together artists and scientists to explore the past whilst looking at issues that the poem seems to speak to in the present day, including marine pollution, migration, hidden histories and human vulnerability and isolation. Grace Schwindt created seven sculptures made out of ceramic and silver bronze. The titles draw on the visual language of colour and atmospheric mood found in Coleridge’s original poem, utilizing the image of the iceberg as a carrier for the body, captured in different stages of abstraction and transition: between dead, alive and undead, human and non-human. Looking at the landscape described in the poem today and influenced by reports of melting ice-sheets and impending climate change Schwindt describes the sculptures as presenting a dilemma, evoking, on the one hand, the stark violence and brutality of landscape set against the figure, and on the other, a tender space where the landscape might be seen to hold and nurture the body. The combination of materials – the fragility and brittleness of ceramic that might give way at any moment against the weight and rigidity of the silver bronze in the form of the dying albatross – further compound this tension. The exhibition also includes new commissions by Serena Korda and Mary Evans and features works by Nicola Bealing, Vija Celmins, Angela Cockayne, Naomi Frears, Ellen Gallagher & Edgar Cleijne, Justin Brice Guariglia, Nadav Kander, Linder, Joe Lyward, Lucy + Jorge Orta and Richard Wentworth. Mariner is curated by Sarah Chapman, Angela Cockayne and Philip Hoare and delivered by The Arts Institute and The Box, Plymouth partnership, in association with Andrew Brownsword Gallery, University of Bath and John Hansard Gallery, University of Southampton. plymhearts.org/whats-on/mariner edgearts.org/whats-on/events/mariner jhg.ar