Kunsthaus Hamburg

With her site-specific installations, Sam Vernon creates dynamic visual worlds. She explores questions of representation with regard to the issues of labour, gender and cultural diversity, turning a critical lens on institutional histories. The artist scans, prints and copies her own drawings and mixed media works on paper alongside found materials, which she assembles into large-format wall collages.

In her first solo exhibition in Germany, Sam Vernon explores the impending relocation of the Kunsthaus. She personally has already moved over 30 times and is quite familiar with the challenges involved. In her newly developed photomontages, the artist combines autobiographical experiences with historical material such as exhibition posters, filed artist portfolios, found objects and documents from the storage of the Kunsthaus. She forms meaning and connection to place through the process of speculating over such forgotten ephemera as an attempt to illustrate archival history. Once a market hall for flowers, fruit and vegetables, the building in which the Kunsthaus Hamburg is located today was a place characterised by communal labour. Correspondingly, the new installation Alter-Reservoir focuses on the significance of working practices and the transmission of knowledge and history.

Curated by: Anna Nowak (Kunsthaus Hamburg) and Melanie Roumiguière (DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Programme)