Words fail me is a site-specific installation conceived by artist Adam Gallagher in collaboration Curtly Thomas and Nikhil Vettukattil. The project takes the form of a multi-authored exhibition and events programme, exploring how art is reckoned by language.
The project begins with a series of newly commissioned reproductions of porcelain figurines originally made by British ceramics manufacturer Royal Doulton in 1904. The sculptures, produced by Gallagher in conversation with Curtly Thomas, directly reference the flambé glaze, a technique incorporating copper that colours porcelain a deep, lustre red.
This flambé method was originally innovated in China during the sixteenth century. Royal Doulton appropriated this technology to produce a number of collections depicting racist approximations of figures and characters from East Asia in a clear example of Orientalism. Words fail me re-purposes this moment in the history of a British company to develop a set of terms and concepts that provoke these historical processes and representations, resisting and destroying their symbolic and artefactual presence.
The sculptures are prompts for an antagonistic, counteractive mode of exhibition-making. A soundscape by Curtly Thomas fills the project space with audio exploring the culture and ideology of costume in carnival. Mirrors installed by Nikhil Vettukattil seek to reframe the viewer’s experience and perspective of the exhibition. Taken as a whole, the conversation between collaborators seeks to interrogate how languages can be instrumentalised and weaponised when applied to art.
The exhibition includes a text contribution by writer Ari Skanda and an accompanying public programme of performative and conversational contributions by artists Ruth Angel Edwards and Curtly Thomas. Refusing the notion of an exhibition as a fixed moment, the project space aims to become a site for learning and growth, for readings and misreadings, and a testing ground to create new shared languages and registers.
The exhibition has been made possible with support from Tower Hamlets Council and Sunshine International Arts.
Auto Italia’s commissions are made possible by our Exhibition Circle and Member supporters.
Adam Gallagher (b. 1989, London) is an artist and writer. He self-publishes a series of critical pamphlets titled ‘E.A.R.F’ that explore relationships between politics, subjectivity and capitalism. His recent group and solo exhibitions include Local Project Space, London (2017) and Limazulu Project Space, London (2017). His commissioned writing includes Special Category Status (2018) and Trust (2018) published by The Site for Contemporary Psychoanalysis, and Extra Judicial Killing (2017) and What did I do to deserve this? (2017), both published by Montez Press.
Curtly Thomas (b.1991, UK) is an artist and musician whose work explores identity, visibility and culture. He works under a number of monikers including clubcouture.xxx, clubcouture, ‘clubcouture’ and Ceremonial Acts, often in collaboration interdisciplinary artists and musicians. Playing with the limitations of the club space, Thomas experiments with how music is performed; using competing references, samples and triggers to engage the audience.
Nikhil Vettukattil (b. India, 1990) is an artist and writer interested in the role of representation in framing and interpreting lived experience. His recent exhibition and sound projects have been presented at Focal Point Gallery, Southend (2018); South London Gallery, London (2018); DECAD, Berlin (2017); Banner Repeater, London (2017); 3236RLS, London (2016); Cashmere Radio, Berlin (2015); Arnolfini, Bristol (2014); and Close-Up, London (2013).
