Yorkshire Sculpture Park...

Amar Kanwar: The Sovereign Forest + Other Stories

visited 17/11/2013

In the inside galleries of the park there was one exhibition which I found especially brilliant. In the 4 rooms were a collection of large scale video projections and artefacts. The middle room was a large room with the back wall full of small containers, filled tot the brim with grain. Each one individually named. There was then a series of small open books of photographs and text positioned around the room. The viewer was encouraged to look through these books.
There was also 3 large books made from hand made paper. In the paper was materials relating to a specific story. One had pieces of rope from nets woven into it, another made of banana leaf. A film was then projected from above onto the large textures pages of the book. This was really beautiful how it was presented so clearly and along side the writing in the book.

My favourite aspect of this exhibition was how the room had been curated. As soon as you walked in you were immersed in the beautiful clean and concise room, full of intriguing information. I think I could have spent a lot of time in there. i will remember this exhibition if I am ever to curate a room or just in the displaying of my future work. 

Although this work is concerned with exploring issues of farming and mining in the Sovereign Forest, and this is far from my current topics, the focus is on how this had an impact on people. It is this connection between art and social cause which I am very interested in. I found this exhibition fascinating, for its content and also it supported my opinion that the use of video can be very powerful when exploring social and political causes within an installation.