Issue 15 of E IL TOPO Magazine will be released the 18th of July in London at Raven Row and will contains contributions by IAIN BAXTER&.
Questioning the art making, collaboration, intellectual property and circulation of art, E IL TOPO, is an artist project, founded in Napoli in 1992. Its 15th issue is an invitation to IAIN BAXTER& taking opportunity of the presence in London of the artist for his exhibition in Raven Row. The "E" and "&" inseparable to each name and bearing the same issues / aesthetic strategies have been taken as a meeting point around which to build the story of this issue.
& IL TOPO will be presented Thrusday 18, in the presence of the artist, with the complicity of Raven Row, of Fabien Pinaroli, curator of the exhibition and Christophe Domino and permitted by the diligence of the publishers.
IAIN BAXTER& and Adam Chodzko will each make exhibitions around elaborate installations they are building in parts of Raven Row previously closed to the public.
BAXTER& will reconfigure his seminal work from 1966, Bagged Place, a giant totalising scheme of plastic, in 'Rebecca's flat' on the top floor of 56 Artillery Lane. This remarkable period apartment was given intact to Raven Row by the family of Rebecca Levy who occupied the building between 1918 and 2009. Adam Chodzko's installation develops out of an attempt to install a giant palm tree bursting out of Raven Row's main gallery and through the green roof above. It weaves documentary and science fiction, connecting the palm to mulberry bushes, and the insects that feed off each to the agencies attempting to control their propagation.
IAIN BAXTER& (born 1936) was inscribed into art history when he founded the conceptual company N.E. Thing Co. in 1966, co-administered with his then wife Ingrid until 1978, making quasi-products and offering consultancy services. His pioneering inventions include the use of a light box for his photography in 1968, and the introduction of telecommunications technology into art exhibitions in the late sixties. His early use of plastic in art works anticipated global plasticisation. In 2005 he put ‘&’ in his name to ‘brand his philosophy of life’. At Raven Row an exhibition contextualising Bagged Place will include examples of BAXTER&'s methods of bagging and tagging as well as his plastic vacuum forms and ‘inflatables’ from the sixties. Although born in Britain (his family emigrated to Canada in his first year) BAXTER& has never had a solo exhibition in this country. He lives in Windsor, Ontario with his wife and collaborator Louise Chance Baxter&.
Adam Chodzko (born 1965) makes work across media, from large-scale installations to de-materialised interventions, often imagined through the collapse of the category of Art. Working with networks of people and places that surround him, Chodzko explores the possibilities of collective imagination and the relational politics of culture's edges. Alongside his installation Chodzko will place a number of other works that echo his interests in displacement and transposition, and the exchange between the rational and surreal. Since 1991 Chodzko has exhibited extensively, with solo exhibitions in institutions such as Tate St Ives (2008) and Museo d'Arte Moderna, Bologna (2007).
IAIN BAXTER&’s exhibition at Raven Row is curated by Fabien Pinaroli.