Theatre of Dreams: Anglo/Polish Cultural Exchange, exhibiting the work of artistic collaborators and married couple Andrzej Klimowski and Danusia Schejbal, ran from 21st October – 18th November 2022. The exhibition formed part of the inaugural Anglo-Polish Cultural Exchange Festival organised by the Polish Social and Cultural Association (POSK) in partnership with Ognisko Polskie (Polish Hearth) and the Polish Cultural Institute in London (PCI), marking the first time these three UK-based Polish organisations have collaborated in this way. The Granville-Skarbek Anglo-Polish Cultural Exchange, as it is titled in full, is named after Krystyna Skarbek, known as Christine Granville, Britain's first female secret agent, active during WW2. Included in the Theatre of Dreams exhibition was a new portrait of Krystyna Skarbek by Klimowski, and a new painting representing Anglo-Polish relations by Schejbal.
There is an atmosphere of night in the exhibition 'Theatre of Dreams'. My mind heard Demetrius' lines in A Midsummer Night's Dream:
Are you sure That we are awake? It seems to me That yet we sleep, we dream.
By the end of the play, the suggestion is that it has all been a series of visions appearing within a dream; the theatre has embraced the audience in a united dream.
Danusia Schejbal. Anglo-Polish Cultural Exchange. Oil on canvas, 2022.
The central painting forming the background image announcing the 'Theatre of Dreams', shows a standing lion with its paw meeting the wing of a standing eagle. The work represents a meeting of England (the lion) with Poland (the eagle). Dark blue curtains reveal this exchange, as though on a stage, the animals playing the parts of their countries and cultures. The viewer is invited to enter the exhibition with these curtains ahead of them, as an audience to the exchange, a witness to the dream. Perhaps it is the blue of this work that sets the space's atmosphere to resonate with night, and the use of animals standing upright like actors, that evokes mystery and magic. This resounds in Schejbal's 'real' costume designs for Macbeth which draw out the supernatural, magic and madness of the play itself. The luminous white of the birds as ballet dancers in another painting by Schejbal adds to the evocation of night, like moonlight at the forefront of the dark stage. With the slight blur to the brushstrokes, the sense of dreaminess is strong.
Opposite the door into the gallery, two eyes look out directly at the viewer. As two figures in profile appear to kiss across and within some kind of wall or frame, their eyes are directed outwards towards the viewer. This screenprint photomontage Synapse (1983) by Klimowksi, is a portrait of Klimowski and Schejbal. Their eyes, meeting in the centre, are framed in such a way that they become their own face with eyes masked in the manner of masquerade. We are invited to witness the spectacle and meet the gaze of the work.
The approach throughout the exhibition to space and the framing of space is striking. In Synapse, frames do not appear to restrict, but perform as another element to the image, indicating sections of the work that may be read independently, or as lines that are guiding a reading of the work as a connected whole. Klimowski's covers for Harold Pinter's plays published by Faber & Faber seem as though they have been extracted from a larger picture, and are not contained by the space of the page. Schejbal's paintings of stages appear to frame a whole picture, with their subjects largely in the centre, but are depicted as though caught in motion; the legs of the birds elegantly in the middle of walking across the stage. An untitled painting (mixed media on linen on board) shows a woman with fiery red hair in a leotard standing in contrast with the dark uniformly dressed people in the background. She appears in complete control of her encounter with a figure in uniform. Her posture and appearance is otherworldly, and as though she is about to walk directly out of the work. She is like a figure standing apart in a dream, the figure remembered upon waking while the rest fades into the background. Walking out of the painting, she crosses the border of dream states into the audience's waking world.
Andrzej Klimowski, linocuts (series of 6), 2022. Above: Christine Granville aka Krystyna Skarbek, Joseph Conrad, Sir Andrzej Panufnik.
The backgrounds of the linocuts created this year by Klimowski suggest further spaces and worlds opened by the portraits of Anglo-Poles they depict. Each portrait background is different, and there seem subtle references to their subject's work, like the sea behind Joseph Conrad pointing at his maritime background and writing, and the musical score behind Sir Andrzej Panufnik, a conductor and composer. The only background that is blank is for Krysyna Skarbek, perhaps suggesting her silence as a secret agent, and also allowing her face to stand apart for this Exchange that has been named after her.
The exhibition's curation was refreshing, unclustered in a way that allowed the figures within these works to step beyond their frames and invite the viewers' collaboration in the 'theatre of dreams'. The vitrines displaying books show the importance of the book form in this couple's collaboration, and recall Klimowski and Schejbal's statement: ‘We both worked as designers for leading theatres in Poland but on our return to the UK we moved towards painting, illustration and publishing graphic novels.’ The display incorporates the various areas of the couple's history of collaboration across English and Polish cultures and experience. The invitation here appears to be towards the meeting of minds, nations, people and sharing of cultures and ideas. The theatrical sense of staged and framed dream states is powerful and inviting of audience imagination and participation, an optimistic launch for the cultural exchange.
Installation images of Andrzej Klimowski and Danusia Schejbal: Theatre of Dreams at POSK, London.
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The Skarbek-Granville Anglo-Polish Cultural Exchange is being led by the Project Curator Julia Griffin and Elvira Olbrich, POSK Arts Director.Project Curator Julia Griffin says: ‘Our project builds on the great interest in the Anglo-Polish cultural links explored in the Young Poland exhibition. The Anglo-Polish Cultural Exchange will double as a cultural and social campaign. Telling our shared history of Anglo-Polish heritage, it aims to create relevant and relatable content for Britain’s diverse audiences whilst countering stereotypes.’ It is delivered in close collaboration with Ognisko Polskie’s Ania Mochlińska-Rakowicz (Vice-Chairman) and her project team, and with the Polish Cultural Institute’s Dr Marta De Zuniga (Director) and Natalia Puchalska (Head of Education, Literature and Communications). The aim of the Exchange, constituting an online museum and research hub with a series of exhibitions and events, is to have it develop into a permanent physical museum located at POSK. The idea for the museum has been instigated by Dr Marek Laskiewicz, Chairman of POSK. Established in 1964 when Poland was under the Soviet rule, its notable avant-garde brutalist premises designed by M. F. Grzesik in 1971, POSK is the largest Polish Cultural Centre in the world outside Poland.
Images courtesy the artists.
Thermal House is a publishing house founded by Viktor Vejvoda. It is named after the inkless technique used for printing receipts from cash registers. It experiments with micro publishing, and a broadened use of the term 'self-publishing'.
The publishing house utilises its small and mobile form to maximise authenticity and partisan versatility. It focuses on producing and distributing so-called marginal authors and works.
Part of this project and publishing house is the organisation of public activities, a way to discuss topics such as self-publishing and a technological renaissance of the Thermal Printer. These aim to provide the chance for individuals and groups to meet and discuss ideas, publications and to invite new members, interested in the Thermal method.
With the help of Open Source software tools Viktor Vejvoda has been able to use this method to publish multiple books by himself and an international series of artists and authors, developing a practical system for a transportable publishing desk, which can be deployed in various environments.
A key emphasis of Thermal House is its cooperative and inclusive potential, and they organise various community-driven workshops. Works and publications can be produced flexibly, quickly and efficiently, avoiding the time-consuming process of mainstream publishing, by locally available material and producing and distributing in sustainable amounts.
For practicality and sustainability, there is a reduction in the print format (print rolls of 58mm width) and print quality (to half-tone black and white raster), which is contrasted to the overwhelming presence of contemporary glossy images. Authors and readers are confronted with a page-less, endlessly designed, reading experience. Final prints are compact, on lightweight paper.
Selection of recent publications by Thermal House.
This review highlights a few recent activities of Thermal House in Belgrade, Serbia, with a selection of images: the production of the catalogue The Case of Poor Images following an international open call at The ARTGET Gallery during a group exhibition under the same name curated by Mia Ćuk; the publishing house's involvement in the group exhibition Bazanje conceived by Luka Knežević Strika at U10 gallery and publication; and Thermal House's public poetry printing workshop at Museum of Yugoslavia (Muzej Jugoslavije) at an event curated by Maša Seničić.
The Case of Poor Images, international group exhibition, ran from 14th April - 19th May 2022 at The ARTGET Gallery, curated by Mia Ćuk.
The ideological basis for the materialisation of this Micro-Publishing platform inside the gallery of Kulturni Centar Beograda was an attempt to activate and utilise the capacity of the institution. Seated at one table, artists, curators and writers produced the books together. With material gathered in response to the open call for submissions relating to the 'case of poor images', those who could not make it physically sent their works by post.
Producing the 'Poor Books' catalogue in the Cultural Centre of Belgrade and installation image of The Case of Poor Images exhibition.
Bazanje, curated by Luka Knežević Strika, ran from 17th June - 9th July 2022, at U10 gallery, Belgrade.
Displayed also as part of the group exhibition BAZANJE, the chat book by Viktor Vejvoda and Luka Knežević Strika was available for pickup from the U10 gallery space. This book consisted of Telegram conversations over thermal printer in 43 steps. Topics orbited around finding common words and understanding over the theme of the city in which one participant of the conversation had spent almost all their life and the other just few months.
Chat book Bazanje and Installation image Bazanje at U10 (Image: Jovana Trifuljesko).
Poetry Factory on 16th June 2022, at Museum of Jugoslavije, curated by Maša Seničić
At the 'Matinee Party' of the Museum of Yugoslavia in the Sculpture Museum Park which celebrated the recently published collection of 'worker poetry' edited by Maša Seničić (Mesto pesnika u radničkom stroju (Beograd: Muzej Jugoslavije, 2022)), Thermal House set up a production venture in line with the concepts explored by the collection; a 'poetry factory', where all were welcome to join the open table and produce printed matter after creating an original poem or poetry from selected archival texts. The Thermal House technique allowed for a fast and collaborative means of production.
Poetry Factory at Museum of Jugoslavije.
More information on publications: thermalhouse.ooooo.page
A Stone’s Throw is an artist’s book comprising 64 gelatin silver photographs made between February 2019 and March 2020 on Robben Island, Western Cape, South Africa. Bookending Roger Palmer’s photographs are two essays, the first by the former Robben Island prisoner and tour guide, Lionel Davis, and the other by the Cape Town based writer, editor and curator, Sean O’Toole.
The title, A Stone’s Throw, refers literally to the proximity of Robben Island to Cape Town, but it also recalls a history of political prisoners held there being forced to quarry and crush stone, and further references the so-called ‘klipgooiers’ (‘stone throwers’), dissidents who were imprisoned on the island in 1976.
Following the Rivonia trial, Nelson Mandela was imprisoned in 1964 and spent 18 years incarcerated on Robben Island, before being transferred to Pollsmoor Prison, then Victor Verster Prison, from where he was finally released in 1990 after 27 years in jail. After he became President of South Africa in 1994, Mandela saw national reconciliation as his primary task. One result of this was that immediately after its closure in 1996, Robben Island was re-opened in January 1997 as a museum and visitor attraction and intended as a sanctuary of healing, and it employed both former prisoners and their guards as tour guides and in other roles. In his essay in the book, the former prisoner Lionel Davis describes how the reconciliation between these groups of employees was understandably challenging and hard won: “A few of the ex-prison personnel found it hard to let go of the authority they had previously wielded; the black staff were assertive in standing up for themselves; and angry exchanges were not unusual. The museum community proved to be a microcosm of life in South Africa with its ongoing racial tension.”
All of the book’s photographs were made facing south, looking from the small, flat island towards Cape Town across Table Bay, so that the iconic silhouette of Table Mountain forms a constant backdrop to various aspects of Robben Island’s harsh landscape and leftover infrastructure. As Sean O’Toole points out, this recurrent motif, “consciously quotes Japanese ukiyo-e artist Katsushika Hokusai’s method of describing varied and fleeting human action against the immutable geological backdrop of Mount Fuji.” O’Toole’s essay eruditely interweaves a survey of Palmer’s most important photographic work from the 1970s onwards with historical and environmental information about Robben Island and a detailed analysis of the philosophical intentions, aesthetic strategies and ideological intentions of Palmer’s work in A Stone’s Throw.
Both textual essays though, whilst providing helpful context, are very much secondary to Palmer’s central visual ‘essay’ in the form of its 64 carefully edited and sequenced photographs. They are arranged in groups of eight, each suggesting a notional day that begins with an exposure made soon after sunrise and progressing to one made shortly before dusk. A black page separates each group or day from the next. This repeated daily structure implies a potentially endlessly repetition that might suggest the experience of incarceration with its constant limitations against a backdrop changed only by the light conditions and the daily cycle of time passing.
Whilst none of the photographs are captioned, they clearly convey a sense of the island’s history not just as a penal colony but also at different times a wartime bunker and a medical asylum, and most recently as a site of tourism. Every single photograph evidences the significant human intervention in the landscape that these uses involve, and many bear witness to the consequent disruption, degradation and neglect of the land and its influence on the flora and fauna. Despite this, there is no actual human presence in any of the photographs – people are noticeably absent from view, whilst their material impact on the landscape is powerfully present in every image. The equally ubiquitous presence of Table Mountain in the background sets up a tension between the extreme slowness of geological time and the rapid rate of social change and human history evidenced by the layers of decay in the foreground. Yet we are reminded also of how painfully slow social change must have seemed to those opponents of apartheid incarcerated here for decades, emphasised in several of the photographs by the rapid and free flight of birds.
Roger Palmer, A Stone’s Throw, Fotohof edition, Salzburg, 2022, soft-bound, 160pp.
The book is available in the UK from Roger Palmer r.b.palmer@leeds.ac.uk. For further information, including a Special Edition, visit https://rogerpalmer.co.uk.