Question Centre presents
Lucy Kumara Moore and Jo Spence
23rd September – 5th October 2022
Elizabeth Xi Bauer presents the seventh edition of Question Centre in which works by Lucy Kumara Moore will be exhibited in dialogue with works by Jo Spence.
Question Centre is a nomadic platform of exhibitions that draws on generational bonds among artists, making use of both conventional and unconventional art spaces. It presents fresh works by a contemporary artist alongside a piece by a practitioner from a previous generation (active or historic), conceived the year the younger one was born. Such a piece may be an artwork or any other item or event that offers an insight into the year of birth of the invited artist. This ‘obstruction’ aims to both contextualise a present day practice within a historical perspective and play with the general obsession of the ‘forever young’ – omnipresent in the artistic environment – thus raising questions concerning generation and context. The project is developed by Maria do Carmo M. P. de Pontes.
Lucy Kumara Moore (b. London 1981) is an artist, writer and book dealer. She studied painting at Chelsea College of Art and Design and the Royal College of Art, where she was awarded the inaugural Outset Studio Award. She has exhibited nationally and internationally including at Jerwood Space and 72 Lyndhurst Way in London, PICA in Perth, Australia and ALASKA in Sydney. Moore’s exhibition at Elizabeth Xi Bauer marks a return to painting after a hiatus of 9 years, during which her activities have centred around her bookshop, Claire de Rouen.
Jo Spence (1934, London, UK – 1992, London, UK) was a photographer whose work examined issues of class, power and gender, death and dying. Spence began her career as a commercial photographer, specialising in family portraits and wedding photos. She pushed the medium beyond this narrow subject matter to explore its political function, challenging the social and structural barriers working against female artists of the time. Out of this emerged her collaborations with the Hackney Flashers, a collective of female documentary photographers. Diagnosed with breast cancer in 1982, Spence later developed the technique of ‘photo therapy,’ using photography as a therapeutic tool to document her battle with the disease.
Spence’s work is in the permanent collections of Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain; MOMA | Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, USA; Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, CA, USA; Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow, UK; Tate Collection, London, UK; Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK and Wellcome Trust, London, UK. Her work has been exhibited in group and solo shows internationally including in Brazil, USA, Canada, Australia, Japan, Ireland, Poland, Norway, Switzerland, Germany, UK, Italy, Spain and Austria.
Notes to Editors
The platform borrows its title from James Lee Byars’ The World Question Center (1969), exhibited in its first edition (at Supplement Gallery, London, in June 2014), together with works by Alexandre da Cunha. Other editions showcased the work of Marcius Galan in relation to Antonio Dias’ The Illustration of Art: The New York Information System, from 1972 (Pivô, São Paulo, January 2015); a series of paintings by Caragh Thuring alongside a 1972 Thames Television footage featuring maverick snooker player Alex ‘Hurricane’ Higgins (Westminster Waste, London, July 2016); a new commission by Jack Killick in relation to a brooch by Gerard Taylor (StudioRCA Riverlight, London, February/ March 2017); Alexander Calder’s magnanimous Black Widow (1948) contrasting erotic paintings by Portuguese artist Julião Sarmento (IAB, São Paulo, August 2017) and sculptor Clementine Keith-Roach alongside a Macintosh 512K – the second generation of Macintoshes to ever be produced – created by Steve Jobs in 1984 (Kupfer, London, November 2019).
James Lee Byars’ self-proclaimed The World Question Center emerged as part of a residency the artist undertook at the Hudson Institute of New York in 1969. Among the issues Byars was then pursuing were ‘the one hundred most interesting questions in America at this time’ and ‘the next step after E = mc2’ – and even the possibility of sending a rocket-propelled vehicle to Mars [2]. Focusing on his quest for questions, he initially planned a road trip around the US to collect them, an idea which was soon replaced by the (more affordable) creation of a phone-line – through which he called Marshall McLuhan (what do you mean, questions? – he allegedly replied) and Alvin Weinberg (axiology?), among other thinkers. While visiting Belgium in spring, Byars was offered the opportunity to perform his question centre on Belgian Radio and Television, who in an unprecedented avant-garde initiative proposed to broadcast it live on 28 November 1969. Fifty students from the University of Brussels were asked to come to the studio, dress in pink garments designed by the artist and sit in a circle. Wearing his trademark hat, Byars sat in the centre alongside four women. ‘Could you offer us a question that you feel is pertinent in regards to your own evolution of knowledge?’, he asked each of the twenty people he telephoned that evening, receiving in return various and varied replies – and, sometimes, questions. Answers were never given, as Byars was not interested in their narrowing ability, but rather in the hypothetical strength of a hypothesis.
Text for this press release has been provided by the project curator Maria do Carmo M. P. de Pontes.
[2] As told by Jane Livingston in Art and Technology (ed. Maurice Tuchman). New York: Viking, 1971. P. 58 – 67
The seventh edition of Question Centre will run from 23rd September– 5th October 2022, open Wednesday through to Saturday, 12 – 6 pm or by appointment. A Private View will be held on 22nd September 2022, 6 – 8 PM.
