Memory Palace

Memory Palace

White Cube Bermondsey
11 July – 2 September 2018

White Cube Mason’s Yard
11 July – 15 September 2018

Memory Palace is a major group exhibition extending across White Cube’s London galleries in Bermondsey and Mason’s Yard. Featuring more than 100 recent works by over 40 artists, the exhibition seeks to inspire reflections on the forms and themes of memory.

The exhibition’s architecture – designed by RIBA award-winning practice vPPR – leads the viewer through six aspects of memory: Historical, Autobiographical, Traces, Transcription, Collective and Sensory. Referencing White Cube’s existing gallery architecture, vPPR’s design will bring works into dialogue in unexpected ways.

vPPR’s director Jessica Reynolds says: ‘We have taken the distinctive mesh ceiling of White Cube Bermondsey as the inspiration for the exhibition design to explore different kinds of architectural memory. The materiality of the mesh, carrying different imprints in its form, also links to cultural memory through references to archival storage systems.’

Highlights of the exhibition include:

• Christian Marclay’s video ‘Made To Be Destroyed’ (2016) which features a montage of film and television clips of art works being demolished, highlighting narrative and cultural patterns whereby art is the victim of violence. Scenes playing with the ‘memory aspect’ – a recollection of the original source – segue into the unfamiliar, connecting moments of rage against the self or others with acts of comedic mishap.

• Miroslaw Balka’s monumental new work is made with more than 500 used bars of soap which are brought together into a single entity. Shaped through the daily use by many individuals, the sculpture gives form to the memory of the collective, the personal and the sensory.

• Mona Hatoum’s new sculpture features a cage-like globe with the outline of the world map seared in burning red neon across the surface. This work recalls the artist’s own history, through the forms of her earlier sculpture ‘Hot Spot’ (2006) as well as wider geo-political events in which the world is ‘continually caught up in conflict and unrest’.

Memory Palace will be on view at White Cube Bermondsey from 11 July to 2 September 2018 and at White Cube Mason’s Yard from 11 July to 15 September 2018.