Adrian Di Duca - Monstrorum Historia
Sat 5th March – Sat 26th March 2011
Exhibition: Mon – Sat, 12 – 6pm
Private View: Friday 4th March 7:30pm
PERFORMANCE FRIDAY 18th MARCH 7:30 pm FREE
For his solo exhibition with the Horse Hospital Adrian Di Duca will be showing a series of life sized polychromed-wood sculptural pieces, the figurative ensemble “The Rude Blemmyae Causes Consternation Amongst his fellow Mythical Creatures” and the unseen “Night of the Daemon”.
Fascinated with the idea of the medieval artist’s “unquestioning belief” and by their everyday act of artisanal creation, coupled with Di Duca’s own Catholic upbringing, the artist is drawn to the issues and paradoxes between creation and belief, between the absurd and the sublime.
From the marginalia of illuminated manuscripts, the capitals of Romanesque churches and the notorious cathedral gargoyles, to the more coded depictions of saintly martyrdom and demonic interventions, the artist has felt an overwhelming need to transgress, to “go beyond the bounds of permitted moral aspirations”.
The capacity and faith to believe passionately in Heaven and all the very real torments of a Hell can also accommodate tales of mythical creatures. Ecumenical councils were held not to question the actual existence of the Cynocephali (the dog-heads) but to discuss whether or not they possessed a Christian soul. In Sebastian Münster’s Cosmographia of 1554 an earlier engraving depicts five mythical creatures believed to have existed. Crudely drawn - who after all had actually seen one these creatures - the engraver for the sake of modesty has covered the loins of these creatures with very scanty loincloths. Seen in this light the image becomes even more absurd and is the starting point for Di Duca’s “Rude Blemmyae”
The “Rude Blemmyae” is a meditation on the role of the artist in society, an actual embodiment of the “transgressive artist”. Visibly constructed from lengths of builder’s timber, glued and doweled together in what appears a conscious affront to accepted canons of traditional statuary. Unabashed, the artist/blemmyae stands while his contemporaries look on, inciting rage, shame and embarrassment.
By choosing to use medieval iconography and techniques, sublimation and taboo, absurdity, ignorance and repression are highlighted and confronted and given a jarring relevance to our own contemporary society.
PERFORMANCE FRIDAY 18th MARCH
DOORS 7:30pm FREE
The Drummers of Tedworth
The ancient esoteric order of The Drummers of Tedworth present there unique blend of drumming circle and shamanic ritual in a heady psychodrama unlike anything witness since the dark ages. dissimilar to other occultists, rather then casting pentagrams the order create magic drumming circles designed to lift the participants beyond the confines of normality and in to the realm of the super natural. As well as drumming the order employs the use of other ancient instruments including the Hurdy Gurdy and Jews Harp, all of which comes together under a thick cloud of incense lit only by candle light.
The performance will be accompanied by a rare screening of "The Sustaining Skin" by King Conny Wobble. The film maker having been given unprecedented access to the order, documents The Drummers of Tedworth's various rites and happenings.