Press Release

John Armleder to transform Tate Liverpool's ground floor gallery with an exciting new installation

Tate Liverpool  Ground floor gallery
15 December 2006 – 25 February 2007

Tate Liverpool is delighted to announce details of an exciting new project with the Swiss artist and international traveller John Armleder. Known almost completely in the UK for works made elsewhere, the artist’s manifold actions, works and appearances across the globe over the last forty years have assumed a near-mythical status. Tate Liverpool will be handing over the ground floor Wolfson Gallery to the artist to create a major new work that will be both exhilarating and unpredictable.

Refusing to be bound by such conventional notions as genre, medium, material, style, and taste, the Swiss draughtsman, performance artist, painter, sculptor, critic, curator and expeditionary is consistent only in his constant willingness to take creative risks.

The anti-establishment and anti-formalist philosophy of the Fluxus group, with which Armleder was heavily involved in the 1960s, has continued to flourish in his mixed-media works of later years, including the Furniture Sculpture of the 1980s. He questioned the context in which art is placed and the notion of authenticity in art with works that couple objects (second-hand or new) with abstract paintings executed by Armleder himself, and which often ironically refer to earlier modernist abstract examples. Such concerns continue to appear in his work.

In 2005 Armleder created a large and spectacular gallery-sized installation in Zurich using a whole variety of different materials including televisions, mirrors, neon lights, musical instruments, pot plants, wallpaper, chopped logs, plastic straws and coloured screens to create a riotous and magical world of disorientating beauty and mystery.

Born in Geneva in 1948, Armleder studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Geneva (1966–7) and at the Glamorgan Summer School, Britain (1969). A member of the >Groupe Luc Bois, based in Geneva in 1963, he was heavily involved with Fluxus during the 1960s and 1970s, presenting a series of performances, installations and other activities. Based around the Galerie Ecart (Geneva), he became a founder member of the Groupe Ecart in 1969, known primarily for their performances and publications. Armleder is currently based in Geneva, but lives and works in continual activity around the globe.

Tate08 Partners is Tate Liverpool’s new sector-exclusive ‘super club’. The partners directly support the gallery’s key ambitions during the years leading up to, and including, 2008. Partners already include Manchester Airports Group, Liverpool John Moores University, DLA Piper and Cains Brewery.

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