A collection of art works so small and light they can be sent by standard Royal Mail are about to leave their London base and reach the Venice Biennale on the 6 June in conjunction with the opening of that prestigious contemporary art show .
The Travelling Light itinerant collective art project was run by a trio of female East London curators: Sophie Wilson of Pharos Gallery, Chiara Williams and Debra Wilson of WW Gallery.
The trio urged artists from all over the world to submit art pieces to be showcased in London and Venice but with very specific rules: all artworks had to be deliverable by post, fit into a standard post office box or bag complying with ‘large letter’ posting class and do not exceed 750g weight.
“When deciding about the way we wanted art pieces to be submitted, we thought they could not be huge because we could not afford to pay for shipping,” says Chiara Williams, director of WW Gallery where Travelling Light was exhibited in London. “They also needed to be easy and quick to install, hang or perform.”
To their surprise, they received more than 200 submissions and selected 58 which were showcased at WW Gallery in East London until 28 May. The selections will soon reach Venice.
Williams herself, half Londoner and half Venetian, has created for the occasion “Birth of Venus”, a transcription of Botticelli’s renaissance painting of the same title. The piece depicts a fully-grown woman emerging from the sea on a shell. The work, consisting of a frozen egg yolk sitting on a bed of ultramarine pigment in a powder compact, “revisits my earlier work and my interest in colour and themes of eroticism, paganism, fertility, beauty and vanity,” says Williams.
Many artists chose the history of the route from London to Venice as inspiration. Ruth Pringle’s “Landlocked” paper boats references the fact that this was an established trade link for the export of silk, grain and spices when Venice was a major maritime power and centre of commerce.
Other artists thought of the trip in a more conceptual way, from Karl England’s portable triptych to Boa Swindler’s “Lost Luggage” - an installation of handmade printed tags with random thoughts acquired through travel inspired by the Dadaists’ use of the psychoanalytic technique of Free Association.
The trio has also inspired people to follow them around. A Canadian research student, Mireille Haddad, is writing a thesis on the reception of Travelling Light by a chosen group of audiences both in London and at the Venice Biennale.
Through her interviews in London and soon in Venice, Haddad is trying to look at how different audiences make sense of the same artworks, especially in relation to the international scope of the exhibition.
“We all believe in this and I think we have managed to do it because we have done the work of ten people,” says Williams. Looking for a sponsor that can help them to bring forward other projects, the trio is hoping to organise art projects in New York, Moscow, Toronto and Berlin.
Address: WW Gallery 30, Queensdown Rd, London E5 8NN
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