Ulysses (L’autre mer)

Title of works: The Odyssey (last page) and Ulysses (last page) from the series Penelope/Odyssey

Ulysse(s): L’autre mer is a group exhibition celebrating thirty years of the Fonds Régionale d’Art Contemporain, spanning all of the FRACs in France. Ulysse(s): L’autre mer presents multi-disciplinary approaches to the voyage of Ulysses using Joyce’s work as a key source, and includes artists such as Richard Hamilton, Yvan Salomone, Alan Sekula, Ron Haselden, Robert Smithson, Simon Faithful, and Tacita Dean.

Two works from the new series of twenty-four drawings Penelope/Odyssey (201–13) have been selected to be shown in this context. The series is a visual analysis of Homer’s Odyssey that developed from research into the text, challenging assumptions about how a text may be ‘known’. The research frames Homer’s texts within new contexts, drawing on textual, spoken. and visual representations of the Odyssey in the history and theory of art and literature. It also builds on earlier research on art historical practices of homage, applying the scholarly technique of the varorium in which variant versions of a text are collated in a single edition. This body of work was nominated for the Northern Art Prize in 2011, and research will be presented as a paper at the Words/Worlds cross-disciplinary conference on text-based work at Lancaster Institute of Contemporary Arts, Lancaster University in May 2013. It was included in Ex Libris as a solo performance, part of the launch of a new manifesto and on-going book project, at Site Gallery, Sheffield in March 2012.

• http://www.northernartprize.org.uk/2011-...