Profusion

Profusion
19June - 11 July
Calke Abbey, Ticknall, Derbyshire

Curated by Sotiris Kyriacou and John Plowman

Anna Barham, Karla Black, Marcel Broodthaers, Lucy Clout, Clem Crosby, Jimmie Durham, Mark Fairnington, Doug Fishbone, Martino Gamper, Roger Hiorns, John Plowman, Daniel Silver, Harald Smykla, Jack Strange

Beacon Art Project presented 'Profusion', an exhibition inspired by the unique setting of Calke Abbey, a National Trust property in Derbyshire. Hidden away in a hollow within an ancient deer park, Calke's interiors and outbuildings are filled with the accumulation of years of collecting and hoarding by its eccentric and reclusive owners. Containing a diverse selection of household objects, artefacts, precious heirlooms and collections of natural history, Calke is now preserved in a state of atmospheric decline, as it was found when the Trust took it over in 1985.

'Profusion' presented especially commissioned and existing works by acclaimed international artists, exploring themes and ideas pivotal to the exhibition's context.

Calke's rambling contents declare their fragility and materiality, emphasising a heightened sense of physicality and entropy. The house is purposely presented in a way that disregards established hierarchies, taxonomies and methods of display, celebrating instead the glorious disarray of a rich diversity of objects and artefacts and their testimony to the passage of time. It is as if the overwhelming collections of taxidermy and natural history specimens under glass or as trophies on the wall endeavour to summarise our knowledge of and harness nature, whilst at the same time, admitting their incapacity to do so through their fragmented, stilled incompleteness.

Calke emphasises multiple viewpoints and possibilities within a framework of interconnectedness. It embraces the tentativeness of imposed categories, highlighting their relativity and debunking presumptions regarding the containment and representation of knowledge.