You are here

George Finlay Ramsay: Volcanoes & Regret

City:

Venue:

Categories:

Exhibition Type:

How many artists: 
1
Date: 
Sunday, 27 October 2019 to Saturday, 30 November 2019
Opening: 
Saturday, 26 October 2019 - 7:00pm

SET Alscot Road, Bermondsey, London, is delighted to present Volcanoes & Regret, a new work by the Scottish artist George Finlay Ramsay, opening on 27 October 2019.

Ramsay makes performances, films, music, collage and poems. His recent work has been shown at Art Basel, Camden Arts Centre, Internationales Künstlerhaus Villa Concordia and the Barbican. His background is in theatre and the DIY music scene— he trained at Ecole Jacques Lecoq and plays in multiple music collaborations. Ramsay says: ‘I see it as all part of the same thing really, movement, emotion, form or lack of it. Configuring reality as feels right in the moment.

Volcanoes & Regret is the culmination of a three-year project that pivots around the act of burning human regrets in volcanoes. It includes three films, a live sonic installation and a Volvo 240 estate car encased in a volcano proof suit.

In 2017 and again in 2018, George invited people through an online callout to write down their regrets, so that he could take them to an active volcano to burn them. He received more than 200 replies. He says: ‘Our weakness connects us, when you read a stranger’s regrets you feel strangely close with them, an unspoken intimate bond is formed, sometimes across continents. I wanted to take them to a volcano to burn because this seems like the only logical thing to do.

He began the films in 2017, travelling to Mount Etna, Sicily, Italy, then in 2018 to the remote volcanic peninsula of Kamchatka. ‘I had no idea what I was doing, when I went into the crater on Etna I couldn’t breathe. I said to myself why I didn’t know more about this. Looking into the mouth of an active volcano, hearing it gurgle and explode is the most beautiful experience I can conceive of. The history of our planet is more volcanic that it is anything else. These are our ancestors.

Book of Regrets: For Kamchatka documents the 4593 mile journey to Kamchatka by train, takes in local indigenous legends about volcanoes and witnesses the moment that the book of regrets is hurled into the inferno.

The second film, Stromboli: Interview with a Volcano, is a short dialogue between George and the volcanic island Stromboli. Meanwhile, Vulva to Ulva records his journey to Ulva, a prehistoric volcano off the Isle of Mull, in his car Vulva. A sort of an origin story.

The Sonic Installation, Volcano Lover, is described as ‘an array of sound making machines, often of domestic or geological bent, which respond to live volcanic data’. At the exhibition private view on 26 October this will be activated by live performance from Ramsay, who attempts to communicate with volcanoes using voice, drone, ecstatic movement and telepathy.

Finally, V is for Volvo, Vulva, Volcano, is an installation formed of the artist’s Volvo 240, which is renamed Vulva and cloaked in a volcano-proof suit, with an ashen volcanic landscape in her boot. Vulva to Ulva will be projected onto the car’s windscreen.

Publication
23 Breakfast Psalms & Subsequent Eruptions a risograph pamphlet containing poems and essays by Izabella Scott, Felice Moramarco, Nasim Luczaj, CA Conrad and George Finlay Ramsay.

Events
26 October: First Eruption — an evening of ritual, music, audio visual collage, poetry and southern Italian food featuring CA Conrad, Coby Sey, Rebecca Salvadori, Leah Walker, Nasim Luczaj and George Finlay Ramsay - all creating live work in response to the project.
7pm - midnight 
Book tickets here

27 November: Last Eruption — an evening of talks and screenings with Prof. David Pyle, Tatiana Degai, Izabella Scott and George Finlay Ramsay.

Workshops
23 October: Unfold Yr Own Myth — a workshop on creativity and ritual for adults.
25 November: My Neighbour The Volcano — a workshop for school children with Oxford University volcanologist Professor David Pyle.

Artist ( Description ): 

George Finlay Ramsay is an artist from Scotland. He makes performances, films, music, collage, poems and so on. He likes to invent religions to play inside and decides if he believes in them later or never. Recently he has been working with volcanoes, bringing books full of people’s regrets to burn in their mouths. His work has been shown at: Art Basel, Internationales Künstlerhaus Villa Concordia, Barbican, Silver Building, BBC Late Junction Festival, Matadero Madrid and Camden Arts Centre.

www.georgefinlayramsay.com
@georgefinlayramsay

Other Info: 

About CA Conrad
CA Conrad is a 2019 Creative Capital Fellow, and the author of 9 books of poetry and essays: While Standing in Line for Death (Wave Books, 2017) received the Lambda Award. A recipient of a Pew Fellowship in the Arts, they also received the Believer Magazine Book Award and the Gil Ott Book Award. Their work has been translated into Spanish, Greek, Polish, Norwegian, Portuguese, Danish, French, and German. They teach regularly at Columbia University and at the Sandberg Art Institute in Amsterdam.

About David Pyle
Pyle says: ‘I am a volcanologist, with broad interests in understanding how volcanoes work, and in the causes and consequences of volcanic activity. Active research topics include: using historical sources to extend our knowledge of past eruptions and their societal impacts; understanding the response of volcanoes in once-glaciated regions to the end of the last glaciation; and piecing
together records of past volcanism, and understanding contemporary volcanic risk, in the Ethiopian Rift Valley.

About Izabella Scott
Izabella Scott is a writer based in London, published by Frieze, Art Review, The White Review, Art Agenda, Elephant, Apollo, Artsy, Studio International, Financial Times. She is currently working on her first novel, set in 1970s London, about desire, self-invention and oil money. She works as Art Editor at The White Review, and co-runs Slack Pussy, a reading group of queer and feminist
literature held at MayDay Rooms, London. She previously worked as Editor for the magazine Noon, and as Editor for the publisher MACK. She studied at Trinity College Dublin (BA) and the Royal College of Art, London (MA).

About Coby Sey
Long-time collaborator with Mica Levi, Tirzah, Babyfather, Klein and Kwes, recorded work spans the realms of live instrumentation, sample-based productions and experimental music, melting
recognisable motifs of hip hop, drone, techno, post-punk, fusion and more into a dubbed-out anaesthesia – as best evidenced on the Whities 010: Transport for Lewisham 10.

Image: George Finlay Ramsay, Book of Regrets: For Kamchatka (2019). Photo: Philipp Krikunov

Venue ( Address ): 

SET Alscot Road
76-89 Alscot Rd, Bermondsey
London SE1 3AW

Other events from Albany Arts Communications

view
Lullaby for Realville
07/15/2022 to 08/13/2022
view
I DON’T LIKE SUNDAYS
06/06/2022 to 06/09/2022
view
Emil Nolde - Anatomy of Light and Water
05/06/2022 to 06/30/2022
view
Delight in Nature: Stanley Spencer’s World
03/31/2022 to 10/30/2022

Pages

Related Shows This Week in UK

view
'The Ushaw Editions' Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair X Ushaw Historic House
03/23/2024 to 06/23/2024
view
Capturing the Climate – Mixed Media Workshop
03/29/2024 to 04/07/2024
view
Luciano Ventrone | Opera Pittorica | London and New York
03/15/2024 to 04/20/2024
view
Lucy Harwood: Bold Impressions
12/02/2023 to 04/14/2024
view
Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2024
02/23/2024 to 06/02/2024
view
COME BUILD A BOAT
11/21/2023 to 04/09/2024
view
Clay Is My Canvas
01/20/2024 to 04/07/2024
view
Choir
02/02/2024 to 03/30/2024

Pages