Drift

'Drift' was an exhibition of work by eight artists at Thames Side Gallery in 2019.

The starting point of the exhibition was Benjamin’s reflections in 'One Way Street' on the Chinese practice of copying books. For Benjamin, the power of following or submerging oneself in the world of an existing text means that the renegotiation is not just with the material at hand but an internal renegotiation on the part of the copyist/artist. Copying is, thus, not simply a submission to a past canon but a testing of what the encounter itself, the embedding of oneself in the work of another, can do to open up to new prospects in the present moment.

'Drift' considered how artistic acts of repetition, reworking and re-enactment as a mode of encounter act as a means of giving new form to what might otherwise be latent in the source object, image or text., The artists in this exhibition shared an interest in the material and conceptual potentials of this encounter: how renegotiation of pre-existing works or found material – both historical and contemporary – opens up a potential to think anew through new forms of resonance in the contemporary moment.

The exhibition was an Outside Architecture project.

Donszelmann co-curated the exhibition and exhibited three works.

OUTSIDE ARCHITECTURE is an artist led curation group, originally founded by Tim Renshaw, Bernice Donszelmann and Mary Maclean with Helen Robertson joining in 2018. The group takes its name from the exhibition ‘Outside Architecture’ which was a collaborative work produced for the Stephen Lawrence Gallery, London. From vantage points that are not wholly within the discipline or discourse of architecture, OUTSIDE ARCHITECTURE seeks to probe questions pertaining to the built environment through the lens of different types of artwork. Through the production of artworks, exhibitions, texts and discussion forums the group opens up speculative images and dialogues on the materials and signs that compose the texture of shared and lived in spaces.

• http://www.outsidearchitecture.org/