Jupiter Woods is pleased to announce Matilde Cerruti Quara’s first UK solo exhibition WHEN THE GATES COME DOWN, SWEETIE, IT WILL ALL HAPPEN VERY FAST: a two-weeks long living installation opening on 7 February 2020 with the premiere of VERDIGRIS, Cerruti Quara’s first play—a piece of experimental theatre which will use the artist’s installation as an open stage.

Dates: 7 - 23 February 2020

PV: 7 February, 5.30pm
Première of VERDIGRIS: 7 February 2020, 7.30 pm
Final Performance: 21 February 2020, 7.30 pm

While the PV of the exhibition is open to all, due to the nature of the work and the venue the performances have limited capacity. Please follow the link to book your place on Eventbrite. Latecomers won't be admitted and their ticket will be given away.

If you've seen an old rusty penny, you've seen verdigris in nature; it's the greenish-blue patina that forms on copper, bronze or brass when exposed to moisture. Unstable, reactive and even toxic. Penetrating, toxungenous, inescapable. Yet a fragile beauty. An alchemical process, metaphorical of a state of natural yet artificial transformation. The structure of the script is inspired to T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets and will embed four waltzing flows of consciousness, inhabiting the mystical universal space of the mind. Cerruti Quara’s interest in embedding elements from the radical theatre into her work originated upon discovering the diaries of Judith Malina, who in 1947 together with Julian Beck founded the experimental company The Living Theatre.

I open my eyes and find myself in the fullest void. It is both chasm and bliss; chaos and catharsis; an abyss of potential. For an instant (a very singular moment in time), it feels as if I could stretch my limbs as further as the infinite and take a leap of blind faith, plunging for good into an endless, beautiful cosmic pool of universal consciousness. This is a spring I’m thirsty to tap in, drawing the magic waters of knowledge.

I see this as a space of the mind reflecting all tautologies of lived life. A metaphysical mirror room, where nothing is returned exactly as it seems. All borders finally disrupted. Nature speaking throughout itself. The Future. The eternal loop. Democracy. A signal throughout the flames. There is no way out and no way in. The audience cannot be contained, but used to become part of the work, that yes. The yin blurs with the yang, and vice versa. I envision a bed that becomes a stage within the stage. An archetypical cradle. For in bed we are born and in bed we die, and in bed we sleep, and in bed we take refuge from both day and night, and in bed we make love and in bed we cry and laugh, and in bed we think. All in all, beds are a very equalitarian venue for subjective entities to gather.

Lights shift. I hear voices. Sound traveling in the atmosphere. And words. A language of the soul, spoken and engraved. 4 quartets X 4 characters. They speak. They breathe, they move, they dance. They are alive. They are four flows of consciousness. Fluent, along their horizontal line of introspective specularity. Contemplative. Oracles perched on the vertical ladder of time. Hope, wisdom and expectations. A gaze into the unconscious and towards the future. Thus spoke the wandering storyteller—“There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”

VERDIGRIS is choreographed by Leah Marojević with music by Delia Gonzalez and styling by Francesca Cefis. Cast features Tracy Bickley (The Oracle of Time Future), Hugo Fulton (The Oracle of Time Past), Tom Heyes (The Unconscious) and Leah Marojević (The Conscious Mind) in the roles of archetypal abstract ideas. Special thanks to Nancy Kettle (Movement Coach) and Katherine Heath (Accent Coach).

The research and development of this show were funded by Arts Council England throughout DYCP Grant of which Matilde Cerruti Quara is a Recipient (Round 6).

Matilde Cerruti Quara (b.1991, Friuli, IT) is a multimedia artist, poet and performer. Unwaveringly challenging paradoxes and the malleable border in between reality and fiction, Cerruti Quara’s practice explores language, identity, spirituality and systems of belief—with a focus on power dynamics. Her practice is formalised throughout immersive set-like installations within which are embedded paintings, wall writings and rock engravings, sculptural interventions, sound and light works. Amidst others, Cerruti Quara has performed at: Royal College of Art, Stanley Picker Gallery, Grow Tottenham, Jupiter Woods, Mimosa House and Laylow in London, UK; Hot Wheels Projects in Athens, EL; q|Lab and Otto Zoo in Milan, IT Museo Filangieri in Naples, IT; The Bauer Hotel in Venice, IT. Her prose poetry has been published as compendium to exhibitions at MIT List Visual Arts Centre, Cambridge, USA; Towner, Eastbourne, UK and featured in independent publishing projects such as ECOCORE and Stimuli Stimuli. Cerruti Quara held a rubric for L’Uomo Vogue and still collaborates with i-D Italy, producing editorials, interviews and think pieces at the intersection of fashion and art. On occasion of the Italian Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale, she co-authored a series of write-ups for its social media.

Images credit: Manuela Barczewski, courtesy of the artist and Jupiter Woods.


You can find the full documentation of VERDIGRIS via this page, and the video below: