Nathan Coley: Tentative Words Change Everything

Nathan Coley Tentative Words Change Everything East Sussex 2022

Contents 3 Introduction

In Flagrant Contradiction Lisa Le Feuvre

Tentative Words Change Everything

4 — 7 I Don’t Have Another Land Charleston, Firle 8 — 11

We Must Cultivate Our Garden Junction Road Car Park, Eastbourne

12 — 15

You Create What You Will St Mary’s Church, Glynde

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You Imagine What You Desire West Beach Promenade, Newhaven

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A Place Beyond Belief Rathfinny Wine Estate, Alfriston

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Heaven Is A Place Where Nothing Ever Happens Brack Mount, Lewes

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Nathan Coley: Text Works 2006–2022

38 — 39 Nathan Coley Biography

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Introduction ‘Tentative Words Change Everything’ brings together a group of Nathan Coley’s signature large-scale illuminated text works for the first time. This ambitious project presents six sculptures by the Turner Prize-shortlisted artist in varied locations across the East Sussex landscape: beside a church, in a vineyard, atop a derelict Modernist car park, on a ruined castle and overlooking the English Channel. A new commission – I Don’t Have Another Land – is installed at Charleston, the former home of artists Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant. This is the first time an exhibition has brought together multiple works from Coley’s iconic series.

Using words and phrases ‘borrowed from the world’ Coley’s text works are richly ambiguous and open to multiple interpretations which might vary according to context and the viewer’s disposition. Placed in carefully chosen locations – including the heart of London’s financial district, a former Nazi swimming pool in Germany or on a remote Scottish island – both the words and the sites are

changed through their partnership. For Coley, this actve relationship between text and site is both an opportunity for reflection and a provocation.

Since 2006 Coley’s text works have been exhibited widely in museums, galleries, biennials and public spaces around the world. Examples are in important collections including Tate, London, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, Auckland Art Gallery, New Zealand, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven and the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.

Installed throughout the Sussex landscape, the works in ‘Tentative Words Change Everything’ find themselves in fresh dialogue with new locations and audiences.

New possible meanings are generated by these unexpected juxtapositions. At the heart of the project, the new work at Charleston encourages us to consider our relationship with home, ideas of belonging and identity and the concept of ownership.

In Flagrant Contradiction Lisa Le Feuvre When is belief needed? On a very general level, it seems to be required most when doubt is at its strongest.

Every person can cite their own examples, every fiction uses oscillation between doubt and belief to drive narrative tension, and all holders of power, whether individual or institutional, affirm their status through a negotiation with faith and hesitation. Belief is part of the invisible landscape of knowledge. Belief can be an explicit declaration. And it is a complicated term to address.

Belief opens a box of leaping and squirming groupings of consensus and conflict, not to mention suspicion and sentiment. To believe is to place weight, value and emphasis on something. It is a process that pulls the fiction of the straight line of objectivity into oblique subjectivity. All these problems come before this word has ever been tied to a referent or wrapped around a subject or object. Nathan Coley’s subject is belief, not belief in. He conducts his research through the making of objects. Belief and art are coupled through the powers of doubt wavering agnosticism This knotted impossibility is central to the artistic practice of Coley. His sculptures study the nature of language, architecture and assumption in order to suggest that we consider paying greater awareness to how we understand our place in the world. His research is conducted by using

language that already exists in the world – commands, conversations, platitudes and conventions. It could be an overheard exchange between friends, a radio programme or the recounting of a historical reference. Each example uses language to represent an event, feeling, or opinion produced by the peculiarities of a specific frame of time.

Coley finds these resources rather than seeks them out; he is a listener. In his hands, words become images, and objects are placed in the public to be read.

A study of the methods of narrating the experience of the present issues a licence to cut though assumptions.

The general notion that this is an age where agnosticism is the primary position cannot be true as belief is found everywhere. It is hard to believe in revolution, in capitalism, in communism, the church, the government. Yet, there is still belief in taking a position. Belief in failure may not be a rosy future; however, the consensual notion that ‘we are all doomed’ has comforting warmth that makes the future, perversely, seem safer. This is not an era when all is thrown out of the window and hedonism prevails – that would be a retrogressive position, out of step with the now – it is time to examine what possibility might drive us to believe. It is impossibility that make’s Coley’s work so consistently pertinent for the present.

— From ‘Nathan Coley’, Hatje Cantz, Berlin, 2014

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I Don’t Have Another Land 2022 Charleston, Firle A new commission by The Charleston Trust

In 1916, the writer David Garnett and his lover the painter Duncan Grant were conscientious objectors to WWI, and their relationship was criminalised.

David wrote to his mother: “Vanessa has taken a house in Sussex and a farmer Mr. Hicks will employ Duncan and me and will teach me farming”. The “Vanessa” of his letter was the artist Vanessa Bell, and over the following six decades Charleston became the rural home of the Bloomsbury group, transformed into a modernist work of art by Grant and Bell.

‘I dont have another land’ was a piece of graffiti found on a wall in Jerusalem in 2005.

In the Charleston context, do the words speak of something more universal, or more specific? Do we read the work as a reference to the people who created a home here, or to contemporary global or domestic politics?

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We Must Cultivate Our Garden 2006 Junction Road Car Park, Eastbourne Presented in partnership with Towner, Eastbourne Previously exhibited The Lighthouse, Glasgow, 2006 De la Warr Pavilion, Bexhill, 2007 George Square, Edinburgh, 2007 Il Palio di Parte Guelfa, Florence, 2008 Nuit Blanche, Paris, 2008 Marabouparken, Stockholm, 2010 Perth Cultural Centre, Perth, Australia, 2012 CAG, Vancouver, 2013

The 18th century satire ‘Candide’ by Voltaire follows the journey of a disillusioned young man. The character meets kings and queens, a politician, a thinker and an artist on their travels before announcing in the final line: ‘we must cultivate our garden’, as if advising others to act practically and not optimistically when faced with similar disillusionment.

In May 1849, the railway arrived in Eastbourne and transformed the town. The Junction Road signal box is Grade II listed, one of only two surviving Saxby and Farmer Type 5 signal boxes in the country. The Junction Road car park dates from the 1960s and is not listed. Between 1958 and 1964, a direct Glasgow to Eastbourne sleeper train operated.

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You Create What You Will 2014 St Mary’s Church, Glynde Previously exhibited Biennale of Sydney, 2014

‘Imagination is the beginning of creation.

You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.’

George Bernard Shaw, The Serpent, ‘Back to Methuselah’ (1921)

The name ‘Glynde’ comes from ‘Glind’: the old Saxon word for an enclosure. The Trevor family have owned the estate here for over 300 years. Dr Richard Trevor – who was Bishop of Durham between 1752 and 1771– demolished the medieval building and commissioned the architect of the Bishop’s Palace in County Durham to design a new church. It was built by John Morris, a builder from Lewes, in the style of Venetian architect Andrea Palladio.

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You Imagine What You Desire 2014 West Beach Promenade, Newhaven Previously exhibited Biennale of Sydney, 2014 House Festival, Brighton, 2015

‘Imagination is the beginning of creation.

You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.’

George Bernard Shaw, The Serpent, ‘Back to Methuselah’ (1921)

The River Ouse used to flow into the sea at Seaford, two miles east. In 1539 a cutting was made for the river, and the new haven was formed. Newhaven has one of the few sandy beaches in East Sussex, but it has been closed to the public since 2008. Above West Beach is the Newhaven Fort designed by 22-year-old Lieutenant John Charles Ardagh of the Royal Engineers to protect Britain from Napoleon III. It takes four hours to reach Newhaven from Dieppe by boat.

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A Place Beyond Belief 2012 Rathfinny Wine Estate, Alfriston Previously exhibited Haunch of Venison, London, 2012 National Gallery of Kosovo, Pristina, 2012 Kunstverein, Freiburg, 2013 NDSM Werf/ Nieuw Dakota, Amsterdam, 2013 Brugge Triennial, 2015 Museum Catharijneconvent, Utrecht, 2020

A young woman tells a story of travelling on the New York subway some weeks after 9/11. A Sikh man, a Black woman with a baby and a train full of fearful commuters are involved in a confluence which stretches their collective sense of perception, trust and humanity.

At that moment, the woman realises that for New York to get past the attack, to move on and rebuild itself, it has to think anew. It has to look again. It has to get to a place beyond belief.

The Cuckmere Valley was drained in the Tudor times, and man-made ditches line the valley floor. Apart from a small number of sea defences beneath the coast guard cottages, the cliffs are being allowed to erode naturally. Rising global temperatures and sea levels will eventually cause flooding of the valley, creating a salt marsh.

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Heaven Is A Place Where Nothing Ever Happens 2008 Brack Mount, Lewes Previously exhibited Folkestone Triennial, 2008 ACCA, Melbourne, 2011 Kunstmuseum Kloster unser Lieben Frauen, Magdeburg, Germany, 2015 Lund Cathedral, Sweden, 2018

Heaven is a wooden roof or canopy over the outer stage of an Elizabethan theatre. In 1982, a prominent US Baptist claimed that Led Zeppelin’s ‘Stairway to Heaven’ contained satanic references leading to it being played as evidence at the Consumer Protection and Toxic Materials Committee of the California State Assembly. Heaven is newly ironed cotton sheets on a freshly-made bed. Heaven is a famous gay nightclub in Villiers Street, London. ‘Heaven’ is a song by Talking Heads.

Lewes Castle was built as a Norman motte-and-bailey fort but, unusually, had two mottes. The area between Brack Mount and the motte on which the later castle was built is the interior courtyard, known as a bailey.

It has been the site of a bowling green since 1640, but because the green is so uneven, the players use a jack with flat sides to stop it rolling.

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There Will Be No Miracles Here 2006 Exhibited Mount Stuart, Isle of Bute, 2006 (01) Scottish Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh (02) Tate Liverpool, 2007 (03) MoCA, Belgrade 2007 Nuit Blanche, Paris, 2009 Mac/Val, 2010 Selected Collections Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh

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We Must Cultivate Our Garden 2006 Exhibited The Lighthouse, Glasgow, 2006 (01) De la Warr Pavilion, Bexhill, 2007 (03) George Square, Edinburgh, 2007 Il Palio di Parte Guelfa, Florence, 2008 Nuit Blanche, Paris, 2008 Marabouparken, Stockholm, 2010 Perth Cultural Centre, Perth, Australia, 2012 CAG, Vancouver, 2013 (02) Tentative Words Change Everything, East Sussex, 2022 Selected Collections Tate, London

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Gathering Of Strangers 2007 Exhibited Nottingham Contemporary, 2007 (01) Haunch of Venison, New York, 2008 Haunch of Venison, London, 2009 Nuit Blanche, Paris 2009 Istanbul Biennale, 2013 Selected Collections Whitworth Museum & Art Gallery, Manchester (02) Israel Museum, Jerusalem (03)

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Heaven Is A Place Where Nothing Ever Happens 2008 Exhibited Folkestone Triennial, 2008 (01) ACCA, Melbourne, 2011 Kunstmuseum Kloster unser Lieben Frauen, Magdeburg, Germany, 2015 Lund Cathedral, Sweden, 2018 (02) Tentative Words Change Everything, East Sussex, 2022 (03) Selected Collections Folkestone Triennial, permanent installation

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A Place Beyond Belief 2006 Exhibited Haunch of Venison, London, 2012 National Gallery of Kosovo, Pristina, 2012 (02, 03) Kunstverein, Freiburg, 2013 (01) NDSM Werf/ Nieuw Dakota, Amsterdam, 2013 Brugge Triennial, 2015 Museum Catharijneconvent, Utrecht, 2020 Tentative Words Change Everything, East Sussex, 2022 Selected Collections Van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven Auckland Art Gallery 01

Burn The Village, Feel The Warmth 2013 Exhibited City of Utrecht, 2013 (01, 02) permanent installation

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You Imagine What You Desire 2014 Exhibited Biennale of Sydney, 2014 (03) Jupiter Artland, Edinburgh (02) House Festival, Brighton, 2015 (01) Tentative Words Change Everything, East Sussex, 2022 Selected Collections Jupiter Artland, Edinburgh

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You Will What You Imagine 2014 Exhibited Biennale of Sydney, 2014 (01, 02)

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You Create What You Will 2014 Exhibited Biennale of Sydney, 2014 (01) Tentative Words Change Everything, East Sussex, 2022 (02)

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Palace 2015 Exhibited Brugge Triennial, 2015 (01) Parafin, London, 2017 (02, 03) The Dick Institute, Kilmarnock, 2017

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The Same For Everyone 2017 Exhibited Aarhus2017, European Capital of Culture, 2017 (01, 02, 03) Sculpture in the City, London, 2019

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The Basic Material is not the Word but the Letter 2018 Exhibited University of Edinburgh, Main Library (01, 02) permanent installation

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From Here 2020 Exhibited St Georges Dock Pumping Station, Liverpool, 2020 (01, 02, 03) Commissioned by Liverpool Biennial and Liverpool City Council, permanent installation

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I Don’t Have Another Land 2022 Exhibited Tentative Words Change Everything, Charelston House, East Sussex, 2022 (01)

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Nathan Coley Biography

2009 2008

Born 1967, Glasgow, Scotland Lives and works in Glasgow

2007

Education 2006 1985-89

Glasgow School of Art

Selected Solo Exhibitions 2005 2022 2020 2019

2018

2017

2015 2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

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Tentative Words Change Everything, East Sussex, England From Here, St George’s Dock Pumping Station, Liverpool A Place Beyond Belief, Auckland Art Gallery, New Zealand The Future Is Inside Us, It’s Not Somewhere Else, Parafin, London The Future Is Inside Us, It’s Not Somewhere Else, Parliament Hall, Edinburgh Art Festival The Basic Material Is Not The Word But The Letter, University of Edinburgh And We Are Everywhere, Brunnshogg, Sweden Nathan Coley, East Gallery, Norwich University of the Arts, and St Laurence’s Church, Norfolk Palace, The Dick Institute, Kilmarnock For other People and other Works, permanent public sculpture, Kunstmuseum Magdeburg, Germany Nathan Coley, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh Nathan Coley, Parafin, London The Same For Everyone, Arhus2017, Denmark New Art Centre, Salisbury, UK You Imagine What You Desire, Jupiter Artland, Edinburgh The Lamp of Sacrifice, 286 Places of Worship, Edinburgh, Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow From the People, to the People, for the People, Future Perfect, Singapore A Place Beyond Belief, NDSM-Werf / Nieuw Dakota, Amsterdam Burn the Village, Feel the Warmth, The Pier Arts Centre, Orkney Kunstverein Freiburg, Germany Knowledge, Kindliness and Courage, Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver A Place Beyond Belief, Haunch of Venison, London The Ballast Project, Scheepvaartmuseum, Amsterdam Appearances, ACCA, Melbourne, Australia In Memory, Jupiter Artland, Edinburgh ACCA, Melbourne, Australia There Will Be No Miracles Here, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh

2004 2004 2003

2002

2001

2000

1999 1998

1997

1996

Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen, Norway 46 Brooklands Gardens, Jaywick, Essex De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea, England Palace, Haunch of Venison, Berlin Doggerfisher Gallery, Edinburgh We Must Cultivate Our Garden, George Square, Edinburgh Mount Stuart, Isle of Bute, Scotland Gathering of Strangers, ICA, Nottingham Camouflage Church, Santiago de Compostella, Spain Jerusalem Syndrome, University of Dundee Cooper Gallery, Dundee Haunch of Venison, London Showhome, City Arts Centre, Dublin Frutimarket Gallery, Edinburgh Showhome, Milton Keynes Gallery, Milton Keynes, UK Black Tent, Portsmouth Cathedral, Portsmouth Showhome, Locus+, Northshields, Newcastleupon-Tyne Ruskin’s Road, Leidsche Rijn, Netherlands (as part of SuperUtrecht) The Black Maria, The Physics Room, Christchurch, New Zealand Nathan Coley and Bas Jan Ader, Vilma Gold, London The Italian Tower, Keilder Reservoir, Northumberland The Land Marked, Centro Cultural de Belém, Lisbon International Style, Architectural Association, London Nathan Coley (with de Rijke / de Rooji), Galerie Rüdiger Schöttle, Munich Der Standard, Museum in Progress, Vienna A Public Announcement, The Changing Room, Stirling Urban Sanctuary: A Public Artwork, Stills Gallery, Edinburgh Demolition in Progress (collaboration with Thomas Bechinger), Pavillon der Volksbühner, Berlin Galleri Index, Stockholm, Sweden

Selected Group Exhibitions 2020

2019 2018

2017

Miracles, Museum Catharijne Convent, Utrecht Utopias, The Whitworth Museum & Art Gallery, Manchester Sculpture in the City, City of London The Aerodrome, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham Artists who make music, Musicians who make art, Queen’s Park Railway Club, Glasgow Actions - The Image of the World can be Different, Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge Age of Terror - Art since 9/11, Imperial War Museum, London

2016

2015 2014 2014

2013

2012 2011 2010 2009

2008

2007

2006

Behold the Man, Kunstmuseum, Magdeburg Glow, Van AbbeMuseum, Eindhoven Just Hanging Around, Center for Openness and Dialogue, Tirana, Albania That Which Remains, Mount Stuart, Isle of Bute, Scotland Bruges Triennial, Belgium House Festival, Brighton As if, Kings Artist Run, Melbourne, Australia information, Paisley Museum and Art Gallery, Small Happiness in Times of Abundance, Art Festival Watou 2014, Belgium The Theatre of The World, Museo Tamayo, Mexico You Imagine What You Desire, 19th Biennale of Sydney Mom, Am I Barbarian, 13th Istanbul Biennial, Turkey 12.Triennale Kleinplastik, Fellbach, Germany Call of the Mall, City of Utrecht, Netherlands Homelands, The Harrington Street Arts Centre, Kolkata Miracles, Art, Science, Religion, Kunsthalle Krems, Austria Communities without Propinquities, Milton Keynes Art Gallery, Milton Keynes Let’s Dance, Mac/Val, Paris Park Liv, Marabouparken, Stockholm Mythologies, Haunch of Venison, London Nuite Blanche 2009, Nuite Blanche, Paris The Enlightenments, The Dean Gallery, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh Jerusalem Show, Al-Ma’mal Foundation for Contemporary Art, Jerusalem Tales of Time and Space, Folkestone Triennial, Folkestone Take Me There, Show Me The Way, Haunch of Venison, New York Oppositions and Dialogues, Lewis Glucksmans Gallery, Cork, Ireland The Greenroom, CCS Bard Galleries and Hessel Museum of Art, New York Persona, Parc Saint Léger – Centre d’art contemporain, Paris Rosebud, Kunstverein Langenhagen, Hanover, Germany Prospects and Interiors – Sculptors’ Drawings of Inner Space, Henry Moore Institute, Leeds Nothing to Declare, Triennale Zeitgenössischer Kunst Oberschwaben Zeppelin Museum, Fiedrichschafen, Germany The Turner Prize, Tate Liverpool, Liverpool Breaking Steps, Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade, Serbia Northern City (Between Light & Dark), The Lighthouse, Glasgow Making History, Tate Liverpool, Liverpool Off the Wall, National Gallery of Scotland

2005

2004 2003

2002

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1999

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1997

1997 1996 1995

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1993

The Unquiet World, ACCA, Melbourne As If By Magic, Bethlehem Peace Centre, Palestine Model Modernism, Artist Space, New York British Art Show 6, BALTIC, Gateshead Changes of Mind: Transformation and Belief, Haunch of Venison, London On Reason and Emotion, Biennale of Sydney 2004, Sydney Days Like These: Tate Triennial of Contemporary British Art, Tate Britain, London Independence, South London Gallery, London Fabrications, Cube Gallery, Manchester The Gap Show, Museum am Ostwall, Dortmund Happy Outsiders, Zacheta Panstwowa Galeria Sztuki, Warsaw, Poland Audit, Casino Luxembourg, Luxemburg Believe, Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster Here and Now, Dundee Contemporary Art Circles 3, ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany Local Motion, Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig Jahresgaben 2000, Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster What If, Moderna Museet, Stockholm as it is, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham Without Day, City Arts Centre, Edinburgh Inside Out, Westfalischer Kunstverein, Münster Continium 001, CCA, Glasgow Blue Suburban Skies, The Photographers Gallery, London In The Midst of Things, Bournville, Birmingham, England School Reunion, Anthony Wilkinson Gallery, London Exhibition without and Exhibition, Leipzig In Visible Light, Moderna Museet, Stockholm Strolling, Musuem of Modern Art at Heidi, Melbourne, Australia Artranspennine, Tate Gallery, Liverpool Nettverk Glasgow, Museum of Contemporary Art, Oslo Correspondences, Martin-Gropius Bau, Berlin Glasgow, Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland A Scottish Collection, Berwick Gymnasium Gallery, Berwick, England Wish you were here too, 83 Hill Street, Glasgow Girls’ High, Old Fruitmarket, Glasgow Try, Royal College of Art, London Swarm, Travelling Gallery, Edinburgh Cameraless Photography, National Museum of Photography, Film and TV, Bradford New Art in Scotland, CCA, Glasgow; Aberdeen Art Gallery Gol! – The Soccer Show, Mark Boote Gallery, New York Pure Fiction, Intermedia Gallery, Glasgow Exposure, CCA, Glasgow

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