The Hope of Wrecks - Museum of St Albans

Featured artists:

Jo Addisson, Chris Dobrowolski, David Ersser, Daniel Goodwin, Friedrich Kunath, Martin Kippenberger, Kypros Kyprianou, Selina O, Adam Norton, David Shrigley, Ali Tareen and Paul Thek

‘We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope’.
Martin Luther King Jnr.

The Hope of Wrecks is a play on the title of the seminal German romantic painting, ‘The Wreck of Hope’ by Casper David Friedrich.

As the world is struggling to recover from a continuing global financial and ethical crisis it seems a fitting moment to explore how contemporary artists address the term ‘Hope’ both personally and politically.

The Hope of Wrecks explores how certain artists produce works which have an inherent optimism when seemingly either they, or the world that surrounds them, is at ‘rock bottom’. This optimism, whether it be overt or underlying, can take many strategies and narratives, such as humour, satire, honesty, naivety or faith.

This form of hope is the essential flipside of hard won cynicism, a form of optimism that allows us to say 98% of life is futile. However there is the remaining 2% between the general feelings of inertia and despondency.

The show will exhibit a range of multimedia works by established, mid-career and young artists in order to contextualise a modus operandi that has been at the core of many artists’ work throughout history. In many of the selected artists’ work there is a ‘gallows humour’ that both mocks and confronts themselves, their environment, or the viewer.

‘Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man’
Friedrich Nietzsche

Opening Reception: Thursday 12 September 5.00pm – 8.00pm (Art and Design Gallery)
Closing Reception: Saturday 26 October 6.00pm – 8.00pm (Museum of St Albans)

Open:

Monday to Saturday: 10.00am - 5.00pm
Sunday: 2.00pm - 5.00pm

Admission: Free