Unsettled Objects

This is a slide projection/installation of 80 images from the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford overlaid with the artist’s own texts. Using the Museum of a developed country as a kind of case study the work reflects on historical problems associated with colonialism and the display of non-Western artifacts. Baumgarten lives and works in New York and is known for using the language and display techniques of early conceptual art to address ecological and anthropological questions. There are strong connections to be made between this work – and Baumgarten’s practice in general – and the work of Simon Starling and Graham Fagen, both held in GoMA’s collection as well as the more general relationship to museology and display, which, again, bears interesting parallels with the work of Christine Borland, also held in GoMA’s collection. Presented by the Art Fund through Art Fund International.