Exhibitions
OSR Projects: A weekend at Hotel Palenque
Arnolfini invites Somerset-based artist-led organisation OSR Projects to take over our theatre space. With Andy Parker, Sam Jukes and Simon Lee Dicker
In 1969 artists Robert Smithson, Nancy Holt and art dealer Virginia Dwan left the ‘art-world’ for the “Western deserts and lush jungles of Mexico”1 staying at the dilapidated Hotel Palenque. In 1971 Smithson presented Hotel Palenque as a slideshow lecture to architecture students from the University of Utah, exploring ideas of entropy and de-architecturalisation, in a style accurately described by curator Neville Wakefield as ‘more stoner than statesman’. This work still resonates 50 years on and has been represented in galleries and publications internationally.
OSR Projects will use Smithson’s Hotel Palenque as a conceptual back drop for a weekend event taking place at Arnolfini. Exploring contemporary ideas of entropy, de-architecturalisation and edgelands in the rural landscape the participating artists pay attention to what is airbrushed out of a collective imagination of the rural and focus on what lies in the peripheral vision. In addition, the work speaks to the traces of the exhibition of Robert Smithson at Arnolfini in 1977, which included films presented in the same theatre space as OSR will occupy.
OSR Projects will use Smithson’s Hotel Palenque as a conceptual back drop for a weekend event taking place at Arnolfini. Exploring contemporary ideas of entropy, de-architecturalisation and edgelands in the rural landscape the participating artists pay attention to what is airbrushed out of a collective imagination of the rural and focus on what lies in the peripheral vision. In addition, the work speaks to the traces of the exhibition of Robert Smithson at Arnolfini in 1977, which included films presented in the same theatre space as OSR will occupy.
