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Saturday 9 December – Sun 4 February 07

Lois and Franziska Weinberger

Home Voodoo

Galleries 2, 3 & 4

The first major UK solo exhibition of the internationally renowned Austrian artist-duo, Lois and Franziska Weinberger, includes a number of new commissions as well as existing works selected and re-made for Bristol. Their practice includes sculpture, found objects, text pieces, large-scale mural drawings and maps, slide works, photography, video installations and site-specific interventions.

The starting point for the Weinbergers’ research is the idea of the garden as a metaphor for society. They refer to this as a site which is in constant flux rather than something fixed and unchanging. Within this ‘perfectly provisional realm’, they investigate the interaction between the uncontrolled forces of nature and socially imposed concepts of order and value.

The Weinbergers are particularly interested in ‘weeds’. This wild vegetation is characterised by its capacity for survival in the most inhospitable conditions, on the fringes of urban life. By observing the patterns of growth of plants in the city, their work becomes a political metaphor, suggesting models for alternative ways of living.

The exhibition includes the Weinbergers’ recent Home Voodoo photographic series, as well as the Transportable Garden, Garden Archive and other works.

A free Family Pack is available at reception.

PERSPECTIVE

In Vienna, over an eleven-year period, Lois Weinberger cultivated a garden archive of ‘endangered’ plants- weeds- from Central and Eastern Europe, collected during the collapse of communism. For the art festival Documenta X he re-planted these plants in the heart of the city, making a garden amongst the tracks of a disused railway line and digging up pavements around the central station in Kassel, Germany.