The Dark Would, Summerhall, Edinburgh

Poet Philip Davenport curates the world premiere of The Dark Would, running from 7 December to 24 January as part of the Summerhall Winter Visual Arts Programme. Concerned with excavating notions of mortality to dig out old, dead categories of art, such as Concrete Poetry, Conceptual Art and Vispo, this exhibition seeks to re-position artists alongside poets and “outsiders” and free up space for a new wave of practitioners.

Exploring aspects of living and dying while finding one’s way through the dark, this diverse collection features contributions from world-leading text artists and poets, including pieces by Susan Hiller, Richard Long, Tom Phillips, Simon Patterson, Richard Wentworth, Tony Lopez, Caroline Bergvall, Steve Giasson, Erica Baum, Ron Silliman and many others. Reading the human traces that we leave in the world as well as questioning what it means to have a body and lose it, The Dark Would maps new works from the living onto “answering” pieces by dead artists including Stephane Mallarme, Ian Hamilton Finlay and Joseph Beuys.

Grown out from a large anthology of the same name, edited by Davenport and published by Apple Pie Editions 2013, Davenport obsesses with finding links between language and the material, words and books and mortal bodies in this multi-disciplinary foray into the borders between life and death.

The Dark Would, 7 December – 24 January, Summerhall, 1 Summerhall, Edinburgh, EH9 1PL.

Credits
1. Plume (2012) Richard Wentworth, kind permission of the artist and Lisson Gallery.