THERE WAS A COUNTRY WHERE THEY WERE ALL THIEVES

Pil & Galia Kollectiv
still from Better Future, Wolf-Shaped (from Future Trilogy), 2008
16mm transfered to DVD 15’00 min.
Group Exhibition & Events –
There Was A Country Where They Were All Thieves
Artists: Gary Colclough, Jasper Coppes & Stijn Verhoeff, Fieldclub, Gauri Gill, Pil & Galia Kollectiv, Helen Mirra, Abigail Reynolds, Edward Clydesdale Thomson
Curated by Natasha Ginwala
Jeanine Hofland Contemporary Art, Amsterdam
4 May – 7 June, 2012
What might it mean to be overexposed to a land? Such that one is like a glacial striation on bedrock- a pattern of selfness and crystal.
The countryside is as much an imagined terrain as it is an assemblage of components: rock, crops, air, people and histories. Hence, the look and shape of land is a production of labour, industry and capital as much as it is a factor of wind speeds and sedimentary formations.
This exhibition is an accumulation of fictions that are registrations of/from place, taking the form of immersive dispatches, field notes and temporal mediations.
Dear Natasha,
Unfortunately I can’t find any email address for you, so hope you get this instead. My name is Sarah Walters and I am a Curator in London. In August 2011 I did a work placement at FICA and first came across your work Dialogues on Curating. In the end they gave me the Part 2 reader because I kept taking it home so much! Since then I have followed your work, reading your interviews and visiting your site, and to my surprise when I went to apply for de Appel I saw that you were studying there as well! I have nothing specific to say, just that I very much enjoy your work and admire what you do. It would be great to hear back from you, my address is sarahwalters14@googlemail.com Goodluck with your new show and sorry, I hope I don’t appear too strange!
Best wishes,
Sarah