A Tranquil Star
Anthea Hamilton & Nicholas Byrne, Basim Magdy, Haris Epaminonda, Salvatore Arancio
09.06.2017 - 15.09.2017
A Tranquil Star curated by Mark Mangion brought together the work of Anthea Hamilton & Nicholas Byrne, Basim Magdy, Haris Epaminonda, and Salvatore Arancio in an exhibition that explored the unstable relationships between material, narrative, and meaning. Rather than proposing a singular thematic framework, the exhibition functioned as a constellation of approaches examining how objects, images, histories, and processes are continuously reshaped through acts of displacement, recombination, and reinterpretation. Across diverse media, the participating artists investigated the ways in which narratives emerge not as fixed structures but as provisional arrangements assembled through material encounters.
At the heart of the exhibition was a consideration of how meaning is constructed through juxtaposition. Each artist engages with found, appropriated, or transformed material, yet does so through markedly different methodologies. Together, these practices reveal a contemporary condition in which images, objects, and histories circulate detached from their original contexts, continually acquiring new associations and forms of significance.
Haris Epaminonda's work operates through processes of collection, editing, and reconfiguration. Drawing upon archival photographs, printed matter, found objects, and fragments of historical imagery, she constructs highly controlled arrangements that resist straightforward interpretation. Removed from their original contexts and reassembled into sparse yet evocative constellations, these elements occupy a suspended state between familiarity and estrangement. Her installations suggest narratives without ever fully resolving them, inviting viewers into a space where historical time appears fragmented and unstable. Meaning emerges through rhythm, proximity, and absence rather than through linear storytelling.
A similar concern with displacement informs the collaborative practice of Anthea Hamilton and Nicholas Byrne. Their works frequently draw upon popular culture, design history, fashion, architecture, and everyday visual language, reassembling disparate references into sculptural and spatial propositions that oscillate between humour, absurdity, and critical reflection. Familiar forms are detached from their conventional functions and repositioned as autonomous visual devices. In doing so, Hamilton and Byrne expose the fluidity of cultural meaning, revealing how images and objects accumulate layers of association as they move across contexts. Their work resists hierarchy, allowing high and low cultural references to coexist within a shared visual field.
The films of Basim Magdy introduce a distinctly temporal dimension to the exhibition's broader concerns. Through extensive manipulation of found and self-generated film stock, Magdy constructs poetic narratives that exist somewhere between archaeology, science fiction, memory, and speculation. Chemical interventions, colour alterations, layered soundtracks, and fragmented textual elements transform the moving image into a site of temporal uncertainty. His films often appear as documents from alternative histories or imagined futures, populated by traces of failed ambitions, forgotten civilisations, and unrealised possibilities. Rather than presenting coherent narratives, Magdy creates atmospheres of melancholic wonder in which historical and fictional timelines become indistinguishable.
Salvatore Arancio's ceramic sculptures similarly occupy a territory between empirical observation and imaginative projection. Drawing inspiration from scientific illustration, geology, botany, and speculative natural histories, Arancio produces forms that appear simultaneously organic and artificial. His sculptures evoke fossils, mineral formations, biological specimens, and other natural phenomena, yet they remain resistant to precise classification. Through ceramic processes that emphasise material transformation, Arancio challenges distinctions between nature and culture, observation and invention. The resulting works possess an alluring ambiguity, suggesting worlds that are at once familiar and entirely unknown.
While the exhibition encompassed diverse practices, a shared interest in material agency connected the works. Materials are not treated as passive carriers of meaning but as active participants in the production of knowledge and experience. Images, objects, film stock, clay, and archival fragments each retain traces of their previous histories while simultaneously generating new possibilities through artistic intervention. Narrative is therefore understood not as something imposed upon material but as something that emerges through engagement with it.
The exhibition's title, A Tranquil Star, evokes a distant point of orientation—a fixed celestial presence that appears stable yet remains fundamentally unreachable. This metaphor resonates with the exhibition's broader investigation into the nature of meaning itself. Across the works, certainty remains elusive. Histories fracture, narratives dissolve, and materials exceed their assigned functions. Yet rather than producing confusion, these conditions generate spaces of contemplation in which ambiguity becomes productive.
In an era increasingly dominated by accelerated image circulation and informational excess, A Tranquil Star proposed an alternative mode of attention. The exhibition encouraged viewers to slow down, to linger within uncertainty, and to recognise how meaning is continually negotiated through relationships between objects, images, memories, and materials. Through subtle acts of rearrangement and transformation, the participating artists revealed the instability of established narratives while simultaneously opening new spaces for imagination, speculation, and reflection.
Ultimately, A Tranquil Star presented a nuanced meditation on the ways contemporary artists engage with the fragments of cultural and material history. Rather than seeking resolution, the exhibition embraced complexity, positioning narrative and material as dynamic forces that remain perpetually in flux. The resulting constellation of works invited viewers to navigate a landscape where meaning emerges through encounter, association, and the quiet persistence of ambiguity.