New Visions: Contemporary Art At Maritime Museum

The exhibition will be on view from 1 May to 26 October 2008.

The Undersea World and Other Stories is an anthology of the artist’s work made over the last decade and features a newly commissioned work that takes as its starting point the figure of Jacques Cousteau. Associated by many for the long-running television programme The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau, first screened in 1966, Cousteau was a pioneering scientist who developed the aqualung and extended human exploration of deep water. As with Patterson’s earlier film work Escape Routine (2002, DVD 33 minutes) that collapsed Harry Houdini’s classic escapes with familiar aeroplane safety demonstrations, this new work takes a lateral approach to a well-known and much-loved subject.

Alongside this commission, The Undersea World and Other Stories takes a journey through Patterson’s work, including his reworked London Underground map, The Great Bear (1992); Monkey Business, a wall drawing inspired by the Marx Brothers’ 1931 film of the same name, showing cargo classified by geological time, animals and ports; Sister Ships (1995), four industrial-scale sculptures bearing the names of ships from the ill-starred White Star Line; Untitled (Sails) (1996), a set of fully rigged racing sails stretching to the upper limits of the exhibition space, bearing references to the writers Raymond Chandler, Laurence Sterne and Currer Bell (Charlotte Bronte); and the one-minute film Timepiece (2005) where a pair of pocket watches move in and out of sync against a sound of a man and woman breathing as they push their bodies to physical limits.

Patterson’s practice subtly subverts the systems and assumptions we live by, offering alternative, sometimes humorous, readings of the apparently familiar. Much of Patterson’s work is concerned with linking seemingly unrelated systems and unpacking the ways in which language is used to make sense of our place in the world. By replacing the names of tube stations with planets and explorers, or by replacing the names of star constellations with the history of a heavy metal band, Patterson turns the familiar inside-out and the trusted back-to-front.

Lisa Le Feuvre, NMM’s Curator of Contemporary Art, says: ‘Simon Patterson’s work consistently explores the sea, ships and time – concepts that are at the heart of our collections and research, making his work a perfect fit for NMM. With a wry humour, Patterson works with the ways that language is used as a framework for ideas and activities, undermining systems that we take for granted. This anthology of ideas alongside the striking new commission, introduce doubt and uncertainty into trusted systems making our understanding of the world just that little more difficult’.

Simon Patterson was born in the UK in 1967. He was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1996 and has exhibited widely in solo shows and group shows in the UK and internationally. His work is included in the Tate Collection, the Museum of Modern Art, New York and many other many international collections. -- www.nmm.ac.uk