Andrea Büttner
12 April–16 June 2013
Preview: 11 April 6–10pm
All welcome
MK Gallery
900 Midsummer Boulevard
Milton Keynes MK9 3QA
Admission free
T +44 (0) 1908 676 900
info [at] mkgallery.org
This spring MK Gallery presents an exhibition of work by Andrea Büttner, realised in cooperation with MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, who are currently hosting an exhibition of her work until 21 April. The first comprehensive monograph on the artist is being co-produced by MK Gallery and MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt to coincide with both exhibitions.
Andrea Büttner works in a diverse range of media from reverse glass painting and woodcuts to video and performance. Her work is concerned with judgment, vulnerability, notions of the institution, and what it means to be on the inside or outside. She is interested in social movements, systems of value and in examining relationships between poverty and shame.
The exhibition at MK Gallery features Little Sisters: Lunapark Ostia, 2012, an installation of screen prints, video and sculpture that focuses on a sisterhood of nuns who manage an arcade in a small amusement park in Ostia, near Rome. Included is a video interview Büttner made while spending time with the nuns at the park, speaking about their work and discussing value, happiness, spirituality and spectacle. In Milton Keynes, this important installation is presented alongside videos, sculpture and woodcuts made over the last ten years, including Büttner’s recent work, Kabul Portfolio, a series of 20 small woodcuts which were shown in Kabul, Afghanistan as part of dOCUMENTA (13) and will be seen here for the first time outside of Afghanistan.
A long row of tables, evoking refectories, canteens and soup kitchens, is employed as a display device in the installation Tische (tables), 2013, in Büttner’s current exhibition at MMK. This piece will be re-created in Milton Keynes, accompanied by Tischreden (table speeches), 2013. This 113-minute sound piece features speeches on the topic of poverty that were given at a dinner held in conjunction with Büttner’s MMK exhibition, including ones by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev and Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi, as well as Lise Soskolne from W.A.G.E. (Working Artists and the Greater Economy).
In some respects Büttner’s work can be read as a series of behavioural studies, with a particular interest in social and ethical questions related to dignity and shame, self-consciousness and emancipation, value and insignificance, and the belief systems and conventions by which they are determined. The exhibition at MK Gallery will provide an overview of these important themes, and how they are elucidated through a range of media.
About the artist
Andrea Büttner (b. 1972; Stuttgart, Germany) studied art, art history and philosophy. In 2010, she completed a PhD on shame and art at the Royal College of Art, London and was awarded the Max Mara Art Prize for Women. Recent solo exhibitions include Moos/Moss, Hollybush Gardens, London (2012) and The Poverty of Riches, Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia, Italy and Whitechapel Gallery, London (both 2011). Büttner participated in dOCUMENTA (13) (2012) and the Bienal de São Paulo (2010). She lives and works in London and Frankfurt.
www.andreabuettner.com
Publication
The artist’s first comprehensive monograph, co-produced by MK Gallery and MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt, is due to be published in April 2013 by Koenig Books, London and features exhibition views and images of her work from the last decade. Contributions from leading art writers Lars Bang Larsen, Richard Birkett and Chus Martinez, alongside an interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist and Nikolas Hirsch, address prominent motifs in Büttner’s work, from the Arte Povera movement and the Franciscan religious order to the German artist HAP Grieshaber. Also included are transcripts from three of Büttner’s sound pieces.
Exhibition supporters
The exhibition is supported by the Goethe Institute, London and Hollybush Gardens, London. The publication has been produced in collaboration with MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt with support from the Andrea Büttner Exhibition Circle of Friends, and the Goethe Institute.
MK Gallery supporters
MK Gallery receives core funding from Milton Keynes Council and Arts Council England South East.
Press information
Katharine Sorensen, Communications Director, MK Gallery
T +44 (0)1908 558318 / ksorensen [at] mkgallery.org
