Isola di San Michele

Responding to the year-long theme „Extrem“ curated by Claudia Maria Luenig, Elisabeth Wörndl and Chloë Brown created the exhibition Isola di San Michele. In June 2011 Wörndl (from Salzburg, Austria) and Brown met in Venice in order to create a body of work. They spent time on Isola di San Michele, the island which Venice designates as it’s cemetery. This exhibition showcases the work that arose from that visit. The exhibition features photography (Wörndl) and video and watercolour studies (Brown). Brown shows in the video piece Rec. 16 and her watercolour studies, views of the tombs at San Michele. These consist of architectural storage systems for urns and graves, which are reminiscient of archiving systems. The grid-like formation of the blocks of tombs repeat and create a complex series of vanishing points, which form the central theme of both the film and a series of watercolour studies This work is part of ongoing research into the representation of death which has been present in Brown’s work for at least ten years. Her particular interest lies in the idea of the Memento Mori which literally means ‘Remember you must die’.