British Council–Korea Foundation Pavilion at Gwangju Biennale: Spectres of Our Own Making
- Organisers: British Council in Korea, Korea Foundation (KF)
- Sponsors: Lisson Gallery, LG Electronics
- Curator: Ritika Biswas
- Artists: Bang & Lee, D-Fuse, Haroon Mirza and Helga Dóróthea Fannon, Syemin Park and Seunghee Choi, Shezad Dawood
- Exhibition period: 7 September 2024 – 1 December 2024 / 10.00–18.00 (closed on Mondays, Chuseok)
- Venue: Gallery 4 and 5, 2F, Ha Jung-woong Museum of Art (1165 Sangmu-daero, Seo-gu, Gwangju)
The British Council in Korea and the Korea Foundation are opening a pavilion at the 15th Gwangju Biennale. The British Council–Korea Foundation Pavilion, Spectres of Our Own Making, comprises works by British and Korean artists created through the UK–Korea Creative Commissions for Climate Action, which ran for three years from 2021 to 2024. It also includes an installation by prominent UK-based artist Haroon Mirza. The Pavilion is supported by Lisson Gallery.
In Spectres of Our Own Making, we witness watery collapse, listen to mycelial toxicity and create plastic ghosts. The Pavilion asks us to not only commune with ancestral ghosts but also become spectres ourselves, coming back to our present in order to question, critique, queer and co-create ways to exist more equitably and with spiritual vigour in a ruptured world that can otherwise incapacitate us.
This exhibition is curated by Ritika Biswas and is organised by the British Council in Korea and the Korea Foundation with the sponsorship from Listen Gallery and LG Electronics.
Curator
Ritika Biswas (b. 1995) is a nomadic curator and independent artistic researcher. Her practice enmeshes eco-critical experiments and climate justice. She grew up in Kolkata, India, and holds a Liberal Arts degree from Yale-NUS College Singapore and an MPhil in Film and Screen Studies from the University of Cambridge. Ritika was curator and special projects producer at New Art Exchange Gallery (UK, 2019-2021) and Artistic Director for the Sea Art Festival (2021, Busan). In the past three years, she has worked with 421 Arts Campus Abu Dhabi, MMCA Seoul, Project 88 Gallery, Arts Council Korea, and the British Council, among others. She is the 2024 Curator in Residence at Fondation Fiminco, Paris.
Artists
Bang & Lee is a Seoul-based artist duo whose modular artworks interweave absurdity, new media, friendship, and historic fiction. Through projects such as Gathering Moss for the 2021 UK-Korea Creative Commission for Climate, their practice has moved towards a carbon-neutral objective.
▶ Bang & Lee Website: https://bangandlee.com
D-Fuse is a London-based visual arts company founded in the mid-1990s by Neurodiverse artist Mike Faulkner. D-Fuse examines socio-ecological crises and climate concerns through interactive and experimental artworks. D-Fuse has worked with seminal musicians and audio specialists such as Steve Reich, Beck, Hauschka, and Leftfield.
▶ D-Fuse Website: https://www.dfuse.com
- Haroon Mirza and Helga Dóróthea Fannon
Haroon Mirza (b. 1977) lives and works in London. His installations question the categorical distinctions between noise and sound and often use the unpredictable and generative properties of waves. Helga Dóróthea Fannon is an Icelandic-British moving-image artist whose work borrows from phenomenology, nature, mythology, and her own disparate ancestral histories.
▶ Haroon Mirza Website: https://www.lissongallery.com/artists/haroon-mirza
▶ Helga Dóróthea Fannon Website: https://www.helgadorothea.com
- Syemin Park and Seunghee Choi
Syemin Park is a media artist and HCI researcher based in Daejeon. He has been interested in the personal, social, and ecological implications of computing technologies and is currently designing AI systems to support social interactions and augment human creativity.
Seunghee Choi is fascinated by the movement and form of living things and the life force that animates them. Choi emulates the structure of natural organisms and infuses them with distinctive digital traits, giving birth to artificial life forms and ecosystems through computer-coded genes.
London-based artist and researcher Shezad Dawood (b. 1974) interweaves stories, realities, and symbolism to create richly layered artworks, spanning painting, textiles, sculpture, film, and digital media. Fascinated by ecologies and architecture, his work takes a philosophical approach, asking questions and exploring alternative futures.
▶ Shezad Dawood Website: https://shezaddawood.com
[UK-Korea Creative Commissions for Climate Action]
The British Council in Korea and The Korea Foundation (KF) invited applications for a creative commission which integrates art, science and digital technology and responds to climate change. This commission is a part of the cultural programme for P4G Seoul Summit held in Seoul in May 2021 and the United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) taking place in Glasgow in November 2021.
Among high-quality innovative project proposals, ‘The Gathering Moss (2021)’, ‘Daily Rituals: Four Earths (2022)’ and ‘Littoral Chronicle (2023)’ have been selected for the commission.
