Land Arts in Outer Space

Chris Taylor sends a heads up about two exhibitions that extend "land" arts from the earth to the moon and beyond. Deceitful Moon is at the Hayward in London and Orthostatic Tolerance is at the ICA in Philadelphia (see below).

Tavares Strachan: Orthostatic Tolerance

Tavares Strachan's Orthostatic Tolerance is currently on view at the ICA in Philadelphia: http://www.icaphila.org/exhibitions/strachan.php You can read Strachan's artist statement here: http://lhfproduction.com/ot/page0/page0.html

And at the Hayward Gallery Project Space, Southbank Centre, London:

Aleksandra Mir First Woman on the Moon (detail),
1999 © The artist 2009

Deceitful Moon
21 July - 31 August 2009

FEATURED ARTISTS: TOM DALE, WILLIAM HOGARTH, MATTHEW DAY JACKSON & DAVID TOMPKINS, GRANT MORRISON & CAMERON STEWART, ALEKSANDRA MIR, AMALIA PICA, SAM PORRITT, KAREN RUSSO, JOHANNES VOGL, KEITH WILSON, CAREY YOUNG

Coinciding with the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing, Deceitful Moon is an exhibition in the Hayward Gallery Project Space that explores the moon as a site for misinformation, misrepresentation and mistrust. Touching on a long-standing tradition of hoaxes and conspiracy theories that found its first modern expression in the 'Great Moon Hoax' played by The New York Sun in 1835 (in which a series of newspaper articles detailed life on the moon as observed through a powerful telescope) the show, like the tarot card that bears its name, turns on obfuscation and doubt.

Deceitful Moon is, in part, a response to the current vogue for exhibitions marking the anniversary of major events in world history. But rather than commemorating Neil Armstrong's famous 'one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind', it pays tribute to a lingering uncertainty somewhere on the dark side of our cultural imagination as to whether human feet have ever touched the moon's grey, inhospitable surface.

While the Apollo 11 mission was concerned with scientific verification and the glory of a nation and of a species, the works in Deceitful Moon propose speculative 'lunar landings' of a different sort. Satires of social and political control share space with meditations on technological absurdity, perception and misperception, and a very earthbound form of moon-gazing romanticism.

Deceitful Moon is curated by Tom Morton, Curator at the Hayward Gallery.