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Jiri Kratochvil – Art Maker In 1979, English poet Craig Raine published his seminal poem ‘A Martian Sends a Postcard Home’. Raine’s metaphorical descriptions of natural and man-made phenomena represented a new way of seeing, from an extraterrestrial’s point of view, attempting to make sense of its earthly observations. It is via this reversed perspective, – from the outside in – or ‘defamiliarised’ view that Jiri Kratochvil approaches his art making.  A couple of years prior to Raine’s poetic masterpiece,… Read More »Jiri Kratochvil – Art Maker

The other side of Forever     Drawing on engineering and cosmological principles and developed over a six-year period, this art-apparatus is part submarine, part refrigerator, part boiler, part electricity and total distillery. …Forever shows us absolute spirit in sculptural form.     An apparatus made with an artisan’s touch and of a practical order, …Forever effects the flow of liquid matter, agitated, condensed, vaporised and cooled under the conditions of regulated heat patterns. The network of pipes connecting metal, glass… Read More »Dr Janet Hand – The other side of forever

Catalogue essay for exhibition ‘Jiri Kratochvil’     With the project of the Jiri Kratochvil exhibition in the Cross Passage of the Old Town Hall we followed two aims from the beginning. We wanted to introduce the artist in Prague, the man who left the Czech Lands in the late sixties, and his work, which is the result of intensive research into the potential of polythene materials. Kratochil’s orientation towards plastics as his only creative material gave us the idea… Read More »Catalogue essay for exhibition ‘Jiri Kratochvil’

Catalogue statement for exhibition ‘Swimming under water’     One of the materials which I am fascinated by is plastic, with its more or less infinite variety, which is a superb symbol of the ‘zeitgeist’, with its blurring of the boundaries between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture. The connection between the singular of the origin and the plural of the effect, its propensity to change and metamorphose, makes it eminently appropriate to a contemporary culture which thrives upon pluralism. These same… Read More »Catalogue statement for exhibition ‘Swimming under water’