Thomas Hirschhorn Hotel Democracy, detail
Common Wealth is a group exhibition that brings together five celebrated international contemporary artists from Europe and Latin America, in the most important display of their work in the UK to date. Featuring Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla, Thomas Hirschhorn, Carsten Höller, and Gabriel Orozco, the exhibition presents around 15 large-scale installations, many of which are interactive and encourage visitor participation, as a way of exploring the meanings, implications and politics of the words ‘common’ and ‘wealth’.
The exhibition, curated by Tate Modern Curator, Jessica Morgan, explores the meanings and implications of the words common and wealth including ideas about the potential use-value of art, how it might contribute to a shared public prosperity, and what common ground is offered by architecture and museum galleries. To use a statement by Hirschhorn, the artists in Common Wealth are interested in making art politically rather than making political art. Their work seeks to bridge the individual and the communal, by developing local practices that remain critically aware of the global situation.
