Contemporary Art At National Maritime Museum

The exhibition will be on view from 22 January to 28 June 2009.

Endless Dream and Water Between has been developed using Green’s own collection of maritime-related films, print and ephemera. Working with footage filmed in San Francisco Bay, Manhattan and Majorca, Green explores the power of islands as (imagined places and) locations where people (and their backgrounds) and histories converge and intermingle.

The exhibition combines films, sound, banners and print to examine how the material cultures of maritime history are entwined with desires and dreams. These are carried across the oceans through experience, representation and misrepresentation. Four projected film works follow fictional and real characters whose curiosity for the islands they inhabit initiates an investigation of the history and movement of people in and around islands.

One character is a Manhattan-based writer, designer and indexer interested in systems of communication; another a writer, herbalist and botanist based in Majorca. Another individual is a writer and marine biologist based in San Francisco Bay. George Sand is another protagonist whose identity extends from the writer of the same name whose works include the 1855 novel A Winter in Majorca.

Through these insular yet contrarily cosmopolitan locations the exhibition explores the systems of knowledge that develop in and around these places, reflecting their sentiments. Various stories emerge, overlap and eventually converge to reveal contrary versions of truth and history.

Green’s diverse practise introduces alternative ways of interpreting ideas of truth and history, suggesting. By telling open-ended stories about subjects that range from the 19th century idea of the Black body through to links between German classical music and American hip hop, Green investigates what has been imagined and invented in our cross-cultural modern society.

Lisa Le Feuvre, NMM’s Curator of Contemporary Art, says: ‘Renee Green has consistently returned to ideas of time and the sea throughout her artistic practice. This study of islands explores the complexities of how ideas of place are represented and misrepresented through the sea. Endless Dreams and the Water Between looks at the ways that islands shape our understanding of our place in the world, in the process bringing new ways of understanding our collections and research at NMM.’

Renee Green was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1959. Green’s exhibitions, videos and films have been exhibited throughout the world. Her solo exhibitions include Portikus, Frankfurt (2002), Centro Cultural de Belem, Lisbon (2000), Fundacio Antoni Tapies, Barcelona (2002) and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (1993). She lives and works in New York and San Francisco. -- www.nmm.ac.uk