Erdkunde (2015)

'Part One: Dialogues with Art History' presents a selection of key works that engage with art history through a variety of approaches. John Wood and Paul Harrison’s film Erdkunde (2015), from which the overall exhibition draws its title, is a form of lecture inspired by the Bristol Museum’s geology collections. Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s large-scale work Tape Recorders (2011) addresses the legacies of Minimalism and participation, with twenty tape measures laid out along the first gallery responding to visitors’ interactions and viewing patterns. Early works by Manfred Mohr hark back to the moment when he first began to work with computer algorithms in the late 1960s as a way to further the language of abstraction. Alongside, Eulalia Valldosera's film and accompanying series of photographs Dependencia Mutua (2009) show a Ukrainian cleaner dusting a sculpture of the Emperor Claudius at the National Museum of Archaeology in Naples.

The first part of 'Looking at one thing and thinking of something else' includes work by Michael Joaquin Grey, Justin Hibbs, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Manfred Mohr, Evan Roth, Eulalia Valldosera, Richard T. Walker, and John Wood and Paul Harrison.