Poetry Reading:
Saturday 9 December: 6pm

with Maria Gorodeckaya, Omar Hamaoui, Christopher Kirubi, Maddie Mortimer, Megan Nolan, Sophie Sleigh-Johnson

at ALMANAC
Iceland rd, London E3 2JP

It’s the sea gone with the sun is an exhibition that celebrates the 10th anniversary of Almanac bringing together a group of London-based artists – Stefania Batoeva, Adam Christensen, Enej Gala, Samara Scott, and Maria Gorodeckaya in collaboration with musician and astrophysicist Joshua Williamson – whom, among many others, make up the constellation of artistic relationships and friendships that is Almanac.
Drifting away from Almanac’s usual solo show format for this occasion, this group exhibition is dedicated to the relationship between the erotic and chaos.
Desire, love and pleasure are forces that are certainly political. They can be so ordinary but able to confer meaning where there was none before, to transform hierarchies, establish new relationships or hijack our gazes in search of contact and bonding.
The transformative nature of the erotic comes from a disturbance – an abyss that can seduce – the essence of which is an overwhelming disorder able to transcend our isolation in favor of connection with others. Deeply generative, it moves within a tension leading to renewal and transformation. Its force mirrors the cycles of nature, connecting us with their circularity or disorder—going through decay to be reborn.
In Greek mythology, the genealogy of Eros varies across different traditions. One interpretation places Eros as a primordial being, born from Chaos, the personification of the formless void. The erotic is again related to chaos, kin to the abyss and the night, from where everything is generated.
The exhibition celebrates the fascination for the deep abyss of pleasure, love and desire that the erotic unfolds. Reminding us of our inherent longing for connections.
The title of the show, It’s the sea gone with the sun , refers to a poem by Arthur Rimbaud which Georges Bataille quotes to describe what the erotic can lead to: an indistinct state that destroys the separation and the fragmentation of individual entities. The moment in which the sea and the sun meet on the horizon line, entering into each other, becoming one, opens up a space of ambiguity for new signification, moving beyond the confines of the self.