Magic Star, 2006, Goshka Macuga and Simon Moretti with Mai-Thu Perret and Anonymous
Magic Star is a collaborative work made with Goshka Macuga and Mai-Thu Perret. It consists of a floor painting in the shape of two magic pyramids facing each other, which in doing so creates a magic star. Magic stars, magic pyramids and magic squares have fascinated humanity throughout the ages, and have been around for over 4,000 years. They are found in a number of cultures, including Egypt and India, engraved on stone or metal and worn as talismans, the belief being that magic stars had astrological and divinatory qualities, their usage ensuring longevity and prevention of diseases. This design creates the main frame for the work, delineating an area of the floor space where a sculpture made by an Anonymous artist with found objects, a campfire and a work by Mai-Thu Perret are positioned in a ritualistic fashion. The works and objects that are placed on the floor were selected for their symbolic value and presence. The work La fee Ideologie by Mai-Thu Perret is a papier-mache self portrait by the artist and is wearing the artist’s old clothes. It is the genesis piece for the artist’s other papier mache figurative works.
Presented as part of Sleep of Ulro, a project by Goshka Macuga, for the inaugural show of the Greenland Street art centre, launched by the A foundation during the Liverpool Biennial 2006.
Commission supported by: Arts Council North West, Arts
Council London and The Henry Moore Foundation.
Magic Star 2006, project design .
Magic Star, 2006, Goshka Macuga and Simon Moretti with Mai-Thu Perret and Anonymous
Installation consisting of:
“Aale de Winkel 10 Point Magic Star” floor drawing.
“La Fee Ideologie” 2004, by Mai-Thu Perret, figure in papier mâché, wire mesh, acrylic paint and goauche, cotton and wool clothing, synthetic wig, cotton rope and wood.
“Journeyman” by Anonymous, date unkwown, walking stick, blanket, leaf, dance stick, didgeridoo, rope, metal chair frame.
"What burns is sulphur (...) what smokes is Mercurious (...) what becomes ashes is sal ” Campfire.
Magic Star, 2006, Goshka Macuga and Simon Moretti with Mai-Thu Perret and Anonymous
Installation consisting of:
“Aale de Winkel 10 Point Magic Star” floor drawing.
“La Fee Ideologie” 2004, by Mai-Thu Perret, figure in papier mâché, wire mesh, acrylic paint and goauche, cotton and wool clothing, synthetic wig, cotton rope and wood.
“Journeyman” by Anonymous, date unkwown, walking stick, blanket, leaf, dance stick, didgeridoo, rope, metal chair frame.
"What burns is sulphur (...) what smokes is Mercurious (...) what becomes ashes is sal ” Campfire.
A Foundation
Press Release
Sleep of Ulro, a project by Goshka Macuga
Featuring Richard Hughes, Will Hunt, Tony Matteli, Simon Moretti, Melvin Motte, Mai-Thu Perret, Olivia Plender, Yoshihiro Suda, Sabina Donnely, Daniel Silver.
Liverpool Biennial 06
15th September - 26th November 2006
For the inaugural Furnace commission, Greenland Street has invited Goshka Macuga to realise her most ambitious installation to date. Macuga's s practice explores the boundaries that define exhibition structures and seeks to put the categories of curator and gallery into a new relationship with each other by hosting the work of other artists within her own immersive environments. Her installations and displays question authorship and hierarchies of value inherent within High Art. Artworks are often displayed alongside artefacts, souvenirs, mementos and scrap that she collects, finds, borrows and purchases. Sleep of Ulro sees Macuga working in collaboration with If-Untitled Architects to create an all encompassing environment, which will utilise the dynamic architecture of the Furnace in order to create elevated walkways, a complex of corridors filled with display cabinets, hidden rooms and anti-chambers, all of which will combine to create an abstracted and distorted landscape. Inspired by Rennaissance ideas of physical levels of Heaven, Hell and Purgatory, the installation also makes reference to the early Expressionist film, The Cabinet of Dr Caligari. Macuga's interest lies in not only in the film's pioneering set design, but also in somnambulism, the in-between state which is refered to by William Blake in Jerusalem (1804) as a state which man must go through to awaken to enternal life and the divine vision of unity. In order to further explore the tension between the spiritual and the material, Macuga plans to curate a series of theatrical tableaux, performances and exhibitions of artworks, objects and curiosities within the installation. Works by L S Lowry, Paul Nash, Richard Hughes, Melvin Motte, Yoshihiro Suda, Will Hunt and Tony Matteli will sit alongside botanical models and samples of meteorite. Macuga will also collaborate with artists Olivia Plender, Simon Moretti and Mai-Thu Perret. Audiences will be invited to navigate on, in and around the installation and will be given the option to take a guided tour, where Gallery Assistants will lead groups of up to ten visitors through different journeys, imparting snipets of narrative, based on the immediate environment and the objects displayed within.
