Vonna-Michell’s House
The exhibition Vonna-Michell’s House by Tris Vonna-Michell (born 1982) presents new, existing and reconfigured works from the artist’s two decades of activity. Vonna-Michell has long employed analogue and digital technology alongside new approaches to installation that encompasses performance, sound poetry, printed matter, sculpture, photography and film. For the first time in a public institution, Tris’ father Ed Vonna-Michell’s (1950–2020) photographic and publishing projects from the late 1960s onwards will be shown and integrated with Tris’ recent works.
In 2021, Tris received 244 boxes of material that his father had accumulated, many of which contained unfinished works, research material or indeterminate objects. Ed had been involved with counter-cultural artistic movements including auto-destructive art, expanded cinema, sound poetry, and the British poetry revival movements. Through his publishing house Balsam Flex he created innovative artists’ books and recordings. Examples of material found in Ed’s boxes include numerous large-format camera components and abstract photographs, which had been deliberately crumpled, left unprotected, scratched and contaminated. In this resistance of the creative possibilities offered by such photographic apparatus, Tris perceived parallels with his own work: an encounter with contradiction, abstraction and renewal in archival and time-based media.
In concrete terms, Vonna-Michell’s House comprises several interconnected rooms that include Ed Vonna-Michell’s work in the context of Tris Vonna-Michell’s archive and his characteristic installations. The result is a narrative that consists of multi-generational aspects of sound poetry, artistic publishing, and counter-cultural moments.
In 2021, Tris received 244 boxes of material that his father had accumulated, many of which contained unfinished works, research material or indeterminate objects. Ed had been involved with counter-cultural artistic movements including auto-destructive art, expanded cinema, sound poetry, and the British poetry revival movements. Through his publishing house Balsam Flex he created innovative artists’ books and recordings. Examples of material found in Ed’s boxes include numerous large-format camera components and abstract photographs, which had been deliberately crumpled, left unprotected, scratched and contaminated. In this resistance of the creative possibilities offered by such photographic apparatus, Tris perceived parallels with his own work: an encounter with contradiction, abstraction and renewal in archival and time-based media.
In concrete terms, Vonna-Michell’s House comprises several interconnected rooms that include Ed Vonna-Michell’s work in the context of Tris Vonna-Michell’s archive and his characteristic installations. The result is a narrative that consists of multi-generational aspects of sound poetry, artistic publishing, and counter-cultural moments.
