What am I doing Here…: Travelscapes

29 Feb-9 Mar 2024

PV 29 Feb 2024, 6-8pm

Overview

off-site exhibition: 34 Bourdon Street, London, W1K 3PR
Wed - Sat, 2-7pm

In 2024, Belmacz and Isaac Benigson Special Projects will present What am I doing Here…: Travelscapes, an exhibition inspired by a question of travel and landscape, and the changes that occur during the alteration of location. The title What am I Doing Here is an allusion to Bruce Chatwin’s collection of essays, and his last published work in his lifetime. Bernard Levin, the infamous and revered columnist and broadcaster, said we travel because we think somewhere over the next hill there is still mystery, there is still something to be found that has not yet been found. We travel abroad for the same reason we travel inward, for the mystery we hope to find. To travel may be better than to arrive. This presentation of paintings will bring together artists and friends to examine notions of introspective thought, pilgrimage, walking, exploration, voyage and counter feelings of tourism, the sinister and the sunburnt. 

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This exhibition was born out of a conversation during Isaac Benigson’s visit to Mexico City, to attend Georgina Gratrix’s 2023 presentation of paintings. He began thinking about how artists record their travels. The exhibition’s basis is rooted in the two foremost travellers in his scrapbook of references, Bruce Chatwin, the extraordinary thinker and writer and the fictional film character, the journalist, David Locke, from Michelangelo Antonioni’s The Passenger, from 1975. In London, What am I doing Here…: Travelscapes, has been realised through further conversations and with the support of numerous agential friends; including Julia Muggenburg, whose ongoing dialogue has helped form the tenues of the thinking explored here, and a special thanks to Silka Rittson Thomas.

Artists