Always the Real Thing
17.03.18 - 14.04.18
Helene Appel
Miriam Austin
Lupo Borgonovo
Hannah Lees
Laura Porter
Wieske Wester
Opening Saturday 17th March from 6.30-8pm
‘‘The church of Chamula offers its visitors no banks. Instead the floor is covered with hay, pine needles, flowers and hundreds of thin candles. […] The smell of resin, incense and paraffin is lingering through the air. Next to the Tzotzil who sit on the floor uttering prayings in their mother-tongue, the visitor is irritated by the presence of three things: running chickens, a reasonable amount of pox, a traditional sugarcane liquor, Coca Cola and a lot of people burping…’’
Testimony of a visitor, Church of Chamula, Mexico 2016
Looking at a contemporary Mexican ritual in which Coca Cola is offered alongside prayers and sacrificed chickens in order to appeal for the salvation of seriously ill relatives, Always the Real Thing gathers work by six international artists whose practices touch on ideas of tradition and authenticity. In the show, which takes its title from one of the most well-known Coca Cola advertising slogans, the ceremonial use of food is re-contextualised with a humorous twist, and mysticism and popular culture are mixed to produce a combination of the sacred and the profane that collapses past and present through anachronisms of the form and content of belief.
Curated by Caterina Avataneo and Anaïs Lerendu
images: Damian Griffith