Iratxe Jaio + Klaas van Gorkum

In september we will be participating in the Entre Nous Basiskamp, an investigative project related to the welfare state. A military style camp will be the setting for a number of activities, debates and presentations tackling subjects such as democracy, labour, education, poverty and (health) care. Several artists have been selected from each province, to live and work for one month in and from the camp.

ARCOmadrid with Gallery Joey Ramone
Opening Section
22 - 26 February 2017

With pleasure we would like to invite you to visit the booth of Gallery Joey Ramone at the artfair ARCO, where we will be showing our installation WORK IN PROGRESS.

Group Exhibition, 21 October 2016 - 5 February 2017
Tabakalera International Centre for Contemporary Culture, Donostia - San Sebastián

The Agency of Living Organisms exhibition seeks to address the interrelations between contemporary urban social structures and nature, from the artistic and collective perspective, by means of organising transient "living” structures, micro-political actions and interventions. Compared to humans, plants and other living organisms have a set of sensorial characteristics that are often surprisingly sophisticated with which they interact and exist in their environment, in the same way that happens in art.

Curated by Pauline Doutreluingne. With Lara Almarcegui, Iain Ball, El Conde de Torrefiel, New Mineral Collective, Tue Greenfort, Iratxe Jaio and Klaas van Gorkum, Anne Duk Hee Jordan, Esther Kokmeijer, Nader Koochaki, Maider López, Gerard Ortín, Tere Recarens, Koenraad Van den Driessche.

A public symposium coordinated by the artists Iratxe Jaio and Klaas van Gorkum, on the implications of exhibiting the original artefacts from a contested archaeological discovery in a Museum of Contemporary Art.

In 2016 the artists submitted a formal loan application to the Basque Government, in order to mount an exhibition of ancient Roman potshards with inscriptions at Artium, the museum of contemporary art in Vitoria-Gasteiz. These artefacts, discovered at the archaeological site Iruña-Veleia, were the subject of an ongoing controversy, as they were suspected to be the product of an elaborate forgery. Inscribed with what is alleged to be the earliest recorded writing in the Basque language, they have never been exhibited in public and are currently under custody of Bibat, the archaeological museum of Alava, pending legal verdict on the question whether fraud has been committed.

To exhibit the pieces in the museum of contemporary art would require a physical displacement of only 400 meters, yet produce a radical change in discursive context. The authorities denied the request, as anticipated, so the artists invited several guests to reflect on the case and on the absence of the artefacts in the museum. The symposium has been devised as an encounter between artistic, scientific and political sensibilities. Each contributor presented a perspective on the archaeological evidence that moves beyond the false-authentic binary, and invites us to reflect on the implication of the public in the institutional processes that determine the fate of their own material culture.