Exploring the Lecce and Salento region, three practitioners came together to co-create new works of art, sharing 500 hours together to bring to light, Progetto Gallery.
Their residency culminates in the launch of the Vegetable Teratology Colouring Book, co-edited by Nina Canell and Robin Watkins and published by Anna-Sophie Springer’s press K. Verlag. At Progetto gallery, this new publication is presented alongside a selection of previous works from K.’s library, as well as a sculptural installation by Nina Canell. The colouring book examines the morphological potential of vegetables and fruits, plants and flowers. It gathers a selection of full-page botanical illustrations and a short text by Robin Watkins.
Nina Canell’s work, which emphasises material agency and sculptural process, engages with primary material – clay and stone – to investigate the deviation and contour of things as they come together or fall apart. Often using room-specific conditions, her installations respond to heat or moisture, calling for presence to replace form in sculpture.
Anna-Sophie Springer’s work as a curator and publisher develops focuses on transdisciplinary methodologies around the denaturalization of natural history in our time of the ecological collapse. She has been directing the publishing imprint and curatorial-editorial platform K. Verlag since 2011 as a means to interrogate the book as an exhibition space.
In addition, the Vegetable Teratology Colouring Book will be presented at the KNOS indoor market in Lecce – a weekly platform for local organisations and farmers – where visitors are invited to colour in and get lost in the potentiality of vegetable shapes. Power to Mother Nature.
Progetto acts as a host of this meeting where books take shape and materials lose form in an opening on Saturday, October 19, 2019, 18:00-20:00.
Nina Canell, Robin Watkins and K. Verlag
October 19 – November 30
Progetto
Via Idomeneo 72, Lecce
