Unconcealed

13 October to 21 November

This exhibition brings together three artists active in the 1970s whose work both revealed and by-passed, the power of the art market.

Cadere carried one of his Round Bars of Wood to private views as means of making his presence felt and drawing attention to his work.  The discourse around this work was influenced by his East European, Rumanian background. In a 1975 interview with Lynda Morris he said people in the West treated him as though he was “dirty”. //Unconcealed// will be showing two round bars of wood Cadere made as a portrait of his friends Gilbert and George, who had presented themselves early in their careers as “Living Sculpture”.

Peter Downsbrough is a New York artist who after many years of travel and work in Europe moved to Brussels, in the late 1980s. He had worked closely with Lawrence Weiner, among others, and his practice is based on the formal and social relationship between two metal poles or black taped lines. The form for distribution of the work was frequently an artist’s book. The exhibition will include a shelf of his artist books from the 1970s and a new installation of his two black lines.

Both Cadere and Peter Downsbrough frequently appear in the Vernissage photographs of Jacques Charlier from 1974. Charlier photographed, and had photographed, Vernissages at museums and early Kunstmarkts in Belgium, Holland and Germany in 1974 for his exhibition at the Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels in January 1975. The catalogue for that exhibition was the photographs of the Vernissage photographs and the On Kawara exhibition.

The work will be accompanied by archive documentation of the work of the three artists.
A discussion with Jacques Charlier and Peter Downsbrough and the opportunity to hear a tape recording of Cadere from 1975 will take place at 4pm on Monday 12 October in the Gallery at Norwich University College of the Arts.

The exhibition has been curated by Lynda Morris to mark the publication of Unconcealed by Sophie Richard published by Ridinghouse and edited by Lynda Morris. Sophie Richard was a PhD student at NUCA for four years and she received her doctorate in 2006.