IN SEARCH OF THE

MIRACULOUS

IN SEARCH OF THE

MIRACULOUS

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the following people for all of their support, hard work and advice over the course of this exhibition:

Jessica Kenny, Dr. Joanne Harwood, Emma Berry, Ginny Sowman, Ann Marie Boyle, James Barnard, Fred Robinson, Heather Leathley, Monica Illsley, Pasco-Q Kevlin, Jill Constantine and Andy Craig at the Arts Council Collection, Dawn Giles at Arts Council England, Jorge Macchi, Brígida Baltar, Ofelia Rodríguez, Yolanda López, Zineb Sedira, Daniel Roesler and Teresa Halfin at Galeria Nara Roesler, everyone at UECLAA, Palladian Press, Dean Pavitt at Loup Design and finally my friends and family.

Sarah Demelo

IN SEARCH OF THE

MIRACULOUSCurator: Sarah Demelo

<Mark WallingerAngel, 1997

>Gilbert & GeorgeA Portrait of the Artists as Young Men, 1972

>>Brígida BaltarA Coleta do Orvalho (Collecting Dew), 2001

In The Use and Abuse of Art, historian Jacques Barzun observed ‘the rise of art as religion’ since the late nineteenth century, prompting Donald Kuspit to respond, asking ‘Are avant-garde artists really our new prophets and saints?’1 An interview with the French artist Christian

IN SEARCH OF THE

MIRACULOUS

1 Jacques Barzun The Use and Abuse of Art. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1975. p. 26 and Donald Kuspit. The Critical History of 20th Century Art. published serially in artnet magazine and online at www artnet.com/magazine/authors/kuspit1.asp2 Here Boltanski refers to the 1987 sale of van Gogh’s Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers from 1888 to the Yasuda Insurance Company. Alain Fleischer and Didier Semin. ‘Christian Boltanski, la revanche de la maladresse.’ Art Press (Paris). 128 (September 1998) p. 6. See also Lynn Gumpert. Christian Boltanski. Paris: Flammarion, 1994 for an abridged version of this interview. 3 Ibid.

Mark BoulosThe Gates of Damascus, 2005

Boltanski echoed this line of questioning when he stated that ‘museums that want to have Mondrians today are very similar to the medieval cities that want to have relics of their saint. If they could not possess the bones of a great saint, they found a local saint, or invented one. I was very moved when the Japanese bought the van Gogh: to think that these people who make computers needed this old piece of canvas, as if it were magical, because van Gogh is one of the great western saints. The paintings of van Gogh only exist because he is considered a great saint who led an exemplary life.’2 In the same interview Boltanski refers to Andy Warhol and Joseph Beuys as ‘great saints who lived exemplary lives.’3 The comments resonated with me over several days, prompting me to question the plausibility of Boltanski’s belief and investigate which artists have engaged in such a debate.

In Search of the Miraculous brings together emerging and established artists who explore the many confluences between art and religion in the twentieth century, providing a visual response to the questions and comments raised by Barzun, Boltanksi and Kuspit. Critics and the public alike apotheosize artists, instilling their works with a relic-like quality. Catalogues, biographies and volumes of critical essays create narratives of divinity. Major retrospectives and million pound auction prices further this narrative, providing spaces and events by which the

Sarah DemeloCurator

from where he drew the name for his series: In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching by P. D. Ouspensky and published in 1965.7 Here the miraculous refers to the realization of self-knowledge and awareness of oneself in the universe, based on the teachings of mystic G.I. Gurdjieff.

Pilgrimages or QuestsWhile Ader may have searched for ‘miraculous’ knowledge, the artists Brígida Baltar, Jorge Macchi and Mark Boulos explore the quest or pilgrimage in their works where they seek to find something, whether tangible or intangible. Baltar’s A Coleta do Orvalho (Collecting Dew) from 2001 traces her attempts to collect dew through an elaborate vial. The work is part of a series of photographs and videos where she attempts to collect dew, mist, humidity and the ocean breeze. With these gestures, Baltar searches for and tries to contain the impermanence of dew, as in the exhibition’s video, something that disappears after a few hours in the sun. By collecting nature’s immaterial and transitory aspects, Baltar shows that perhaps any attempt to grasp something as ephemeral as dew is ultimately impossible and cannot be fully understood, much like Ader’s search for the miraculous.8

Jorge Macchi’s Buenos Aires Tour (2003) charts his chance journey around the city. By breaking a piece of glass over a map of Buenos Aires, Macchi created eight different routes with over forty various stops along the way, resulting in a labyrinthine journey from the fractures in the glass. He travelled down the routes collecting objects along the way as documentation – a handwritten English-Spanish dictionary, postcards and a letter. In this work, ‘Macchi seeks to capture and at the same time release the ephemeral experience of movement in the city.’9 The miraculous that Macchi seeks results from the desire to know the city, to dive head first into urban disorientation or unfamiliarity and to emerge with new knowledge, here synonymous with experience, of Buenos Aires.

Both Baltar’s and Macchi’s quests revolve around the artist as the subject and seeker, but Mark Boulos’s film The Gates of Damascus (2005) documents Easter weekend in the life of Myrna Nazzour, a woman who claims to have received the stigmata and secretes olive oil and blood from her skin. Boulos films the many followers who seek out Nazzour in order to hear her visions, receive blessings and her supposed healing powers. Even going so far as to refer to her as Saint Myrna, the pilgrims Boulos documents look toward Nazzour for miracles seeking to capture a fleeting divine encounter through visiting her home. The film

7 P.D. Ouspensky. In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1950.8 Ania Corcilius. ‘Untitled.’ http://www.nararoesler.com.br/artistas_txte.asp?idartista=199 Eva-Lynn Alicia Jagoe. ‘Jorge Macchi’s Fractured Narratives of Buenos Aires.’ Light Music. Colchester: AHRC Centre for the Studies of Surrealism and its Legacies, University of Essex, 2006. p. 50.

audience can come close to these works and engulf them in a pseudo-religious experience. While the art world changes so do the artists, each feeding one another. Artists respond to these changes by creating works that play on the notions of artistic genius as divine intervention and the work as relic.

This exhibition brings together artists who explore these ideas in their works, taking its title from Bas Jan Ader’s influential series In Search of the Miraculous (1973-1975). Ader’s first performance saw him walking from dusk to dawn alongside a highway, before transforming the work into a three-part series that would be ‘the consequent realisation of an idea, the idea of the tragic hero on the quest for the sublime.’4 Ader envisioned the final two parts of the series as documenting crossing the ocean in a one-man yacht to Amsterdam where he would walk through the city in a performance that echoed the first walk in Los Angeles, and finally bringing together all three parts for an exhibition in the Netherlands. Already an experienced sailor, Ader set out in July 1975 in his boat Ocean Wave from Cape Cod. Three weeks later, all radio contact with Ader was lost and in April 1976 his boat washed ashore off the coast of Ireland. To this day Ader remains missing, as his body was never found.

In Search of the Miraculous embodies the quintessential tragic romantic hero on a quest for something or someone. Ader’s work displays a number of influences over the exhibition – one, the quest, or pilgrimage even, for something and two, the cult of the artist or genius which has grown around Ader over the last number of years as evidenced by the recent number of exhibitions and books dedicated to him.5 Such is this upward trajectory that his estate is conducting a re-evaluation of all sales, loan and copyright requests, hence his absence from this show.6

Questions raised from Ader’s work in conjunction with both Kuspit’s and Boltanski’s comments began to reveal varying themes running through works that I encountered in the course of my research. Looking at modern and contemporary work taking the intersection of Ader, Kuspit and Boltanski as our starting point uncovers themes such as pilgrimages, self-portraits as saints and relics. However, as much as these themes conjure associations with a more traditional idea of religious art perhaps, I would like to suggest instead that they move beyond a purely religious understanding towards something broader and ungraspable - something that Ader searched for when he set out on the Ocean Wave. The miraculous may not necessarily have been the definition we would normally resort to, namely some sort of divine intervention or even extraordinary circumstances, but rather it stems from title of the book

4 Jan Verwoert. Bas Jan Ader: In Search of the Miraculous. London: Afterall Books, 2006. p. 2.5 Ader moved from relative obscurity to art star status since the 1990s as witnessed by his inclusion in Tate Modern’s 2005 Open Systems – Rethinking Art c. 1970 and a retrospective at the Camden Arts Centre in 2006. 6 For the history of Ader’s estate since the 1970s see Wade Saunders. ‘In dreams begin responsibilities.’ Art in America. 92.2 (February 2003): 54-65.

Zineb SediraSelf-Portrait or the Virgin Mary, 2000

biography as an in to the work, hoping that by gleaning personal details the artwork’s meaning will be revealed, but with the Gilbert & George this is denied. The work mimics religious pilgrims seeking to receive divine revelation from a saint’s image and hoping that it will pass on part of their divinity onto the viewer.

RelicsIf artists represent themselves as saints or are understood as something similar, then their works could be interpreted as relics. When the artist’s biography and practice becomes compounded, much like Boltanski’s comparison between relics of Medieval saints and museums buying Mondrians, then paintings and objects are all that remains of an artist and their practice.

In Barbara Hepworth’s Icon (1957) her process and the form of the sculpture moves the question of the saintly from the artist onto the object, prompting the work’s association with reliquary. Perhaps what interests me most with Hepworth’s work and its relationship to the exhibition’s theme stems from an essay on her work written by Jeanette Winterson where the writer comments that upon piercing the form ‘she allowed us to see nothing - a privilege previously enjoyed by God. By surrounding space with form, form can make the visible invisible.’14 Winterson continued stating that Hepworth’s work provides a ‘relationship with the invisible.’15 What struck me was the overwhelming parallel between the experiences a Hepworth sculpture invokes compared to that of a religious experience in a church, in front of a relic or image of a saint. Both attempt to communicate to the viewer a kind of transcendence beyond themselves in their pairing of experience and form and image. Icon is an remarkable marriage of avant-garde aesthetics and spirituality on the cusp of Hepworth’s turn toward more overt religious symbolism in the 1960s. In the context of the exhibition, Hepworth provides another dimension to how artists have attempted to grasp the ephemeral in their work.

Understood alongside Hepworth’s Icon, Yves Klein Untitled (1991) provides another way of exploring how the works, whether a piece of pigment or sculpture, can be interpreted as a relic through their link to artistic process or through the invoking of an experience. Conjuring an image of Klein’s work in one’s head, those familiar with his work may immediately recall his monochrome paintings or sculptures using his trademark colour: International Klein Blue. A colour described as a ‘full void, this nothing which encloses the everything possible, this

14 Jeanette Winterson. ‘The Hole of Life.’ Barbara Hepworth: Centenary. (exh. cat.) Chris Stephens, ed. London: Tate Publishing, 2003. p. 20.15 Ibid.

challenges our understanding of modern-day pilgrimages and pilgrims as Nazzour’s home, filled with people toting cameras and video equipment, is reminiscent of our fascination with celebrities and the paparazzi.

Self-portraits as saintsWhile Boulos creates a portrait of a woman whom others believe is a saint, other artists in the exhibition use their own bodies as part of their investigations into the miraculous. Some of the self-portraits in the show use religious icons to question our belief in the imagery, but some have become iconic through the artist’s celebrity status in the art world, like Gilbert & George, and their relation to particular movements, such as Yolanda López and Feminist art from the 1970s.

Self-portraiture provides a complex vehicle to question traditional religious iconography, such as Zineb Sedira’s Self-Portrait or the Virgin Mary (2000) that situates the female body as a site of religious controversies. In the self-portrait, Sedira wears the white Algerian haik in contrast to the media’s persistent use of the black chador and dismissal of other veil colours and types. Covered in the haik, Sedira wants to ‘overturn Western stereotypes about the veil’ by emphasizing the similarities between the veil and the traditional blue veil that the Virgin Mary wears in religious icons.10

Yolanda López’s Portrait of the Artist as the Virgin of Guadalupe (1978) is one of a series of three portraits of herself, her mother and grandmother, which look at the use of female imagery in Chicana culture, by inserting herself into a mandorla of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Traditional representations of the Virgin depict her as passive, whereas López constructs herself as strong and powerful thus transforming the icon. What results is the ‘repositioning [then] becomes both satire and provocation, while retaining the transfigurative liberation of the icon.’11 In doing so, López asks the question ‘what about the portrayal of ourselves in our own culture? Who are our heroes, our role models?’12 Today the work has taken on a double role as a frequently reproduced image representing 1970s Feminist and Chicana art, positing both López and the self-portrait as saint and icon.

The same holds true for the artists Gilbert & George who have been described as the ‘patron saints of contemporary British art.’13 A Portrait of the Artists as Young Men (1972) plays out the dual reading as the work questions whether this video portrait reveals aspects of the artist’s biography by watching the video, when in fact Gilbert & George don’t actually do anything, apart from George smoking. Viewers look towards

10 Joseph McGonagle. ‘Translating Differences: An Interview with Zineb Sedira.’ Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. 31.3 (2006): 624-625.11 Amalia Mesa-Bains. Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmations, 1991, R. G. del Castillo et al [Eds.], Wright Art Gallery, University of California, Los Angeles: Los Angeles, p. 13712 Yolanda López. Yolanda M. López Works: 1975-1978. [exh. cat.] San Diego, 1978. n.p.13 Jonathan Jones. ‘A Portrait of the Artists as Young Men, 1972.’ The Guardian. Saturday 22 July 2000.

supernatural asthenic silence of colour which finally, beyond anecdote and formal pretext, makes the immortal grandeur of a Giotto.’16 Both Klein and the colour have become synonymous with one another and the small fragment of blue pigment recalls the supposed shards of bones from saints or pieces of the True Cross found in churches all over the world.

The association between relics and the body is played out in Ofelia Rodríguez’s Wordless – with the Virgin of Guadalupe (1998), when she calls attention to the parallels between the saint represented and the physical object itself. Rodríguez found the sequined image of the Virgin – a relic of not only the saint but of the commercialization of the Virgin and its transformation into trinkets and kitsch found all over Latin America, particularly in Mexico. The use of the Virgin’s image paired with the electrical plug symbolizes both ‘the incorporation of the sacred and the everyday’ making the work ‘a sombre foil to the devotional kitsch.’17 The cord appears to plug into the saint prompting the viewer to imagine the image will do something, but nothing happens. Rodríguez’s Virgin does not utter a word – echoing the work’s title Wordless.

Each of the artists approach relics, saints and pilgrimages using the body. Both Macchi and Baltar use their own body to chart an experience, be it a chance journey in Buenos Aires or trying to capture the ephemerality of nature creating a variation of the pilgrimage. Boulos’s film documents the experiences of Nazzour and the pilgrims who hope that the divine intervention that overtakes her body is somehow passed onto theirs. In contrast, the works that deal with relics or are relics themselves exist in absentia of the body, like the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe in Rodríguez’s work. The small piece of Klein’s pigment and Hepworth’s Icon are all that remains of their practice and of their person to the viewer, standing in for their body. López and Sedira usurp religious iconography in order to question our understanding of the political and spiritual meanings behind traditional images. Gilbert & George’s video appears to promise a portrait of the artists, but we are unable to glean any biography from their performance. While the artists in the exhibition draw from religious iconography, their messages transcend beyond religion. In the end the search returns to Ader and the quest for knowledge or self-awareness, understood as miraculousness, something that each of the artists moves toward or tries to convey in their work and for the viewer.

16 Pierre Restany, ‘L’epoca blue, il secondo minuto della verita’ (The Blue Period, The Second Minute of Truth.’), announcement card fort Yves Klein: Proposte mononchrome, Galeria Apollinaire, Milan, January 2-12, 1957 quoted in Sidra Stitch, Yves Klein. [exh. cat.] London: Hayward Gallery, 1995. p. 81.17 Dawn Ades. ‘Ofelia Rodríguez: Popular Accomplice.’ Relics and Momentos: Recent Work by Ofelia Rodríguez. Colchester: University of Essex, 1999. p.6.

Barbara HepworthIcon, 1957

Yves KleinUntitled, 1991

This text investigates the search for the real self in the works of four artists: Brígida Baltar, Jorge Macchi, Ofelia Rodríguez and Yolanda López. As we have learned, the current exhibition takes its name from In Search of the Miraculous the unfinished, three-part work by Bas Jan

Ofelia RodríguezWordless – with the Virgin of Guadalupe, 1998

IN SEARCH OF THE

REAL SELFAder. Ader, in turn, named his series after the book by P. D. Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching (1965), an account of the author’s relationship with G. I. Gurdjieff, described in Jacob Needleman’s synopsis as ‘one of the most enigmatic men of the twentieth century.’1 In this context the miraculous is not treated in a strictly religious sense but refers to the development of being in man. Gurdjieff proposed that ‘man is not; he is only a fragmented and veiled collection of personages masquerading as a real self. The real self must be formed through work, through a specific form of suffering, a discipline.’2

The absence of such discipline in the modern, Western world, led Gurdjieff to propose a fourth way that ‘works on all aspects of man at the same time, and requires no renunciation or belief.’ On the contrary, ‘it can and must be practised in the midst of ordinary life conditions,’ which makes it both faster and more difficult to follow. Central to man’s successful development of his real self is the unity of three centres of perception: the thinking centre, the emotional centre, and the moving-instinctive centre. With these centres related correctly, he can ‘cease to be a machine; he can become conscious.’3

It is interesting to consider Ader’s work in relation to Gurdjieff’s system, especially the possibility that an artist is one of the few

1 Jacob Needleman. ‘In Search of the Miraculous: A Synopsis by Jacob Needleman.’ Gurdjieff International Review. Winter 1998/1999, Issue, Vol. II (2), Revision May 24 2002, p 1. http://www.gurdjieff.org/needleman1.htm (13.09.2007)2 ibid.: p 23 ibid.

Dr Joanne HarwoodAssistant Director of UECLAA

personages in the ‘Western’ world whose discipline is practised in ordinary life and whose work is potentially a means of ‘self-remembering,’ which can lead not only to conscience but also to ‘creative intelligence.’4 Ader’s work and specifically In Search of the Miraculous would seem in some ways to apply Gurdjieff’s teachings by testing the body, mind and emotions in the midst the city of Los Angeles, then the ocean, and potentially the streets of Amsterdam.

The ocean stretch, at the same time, removed Ader from ordinary life and isolated him in the vastness of Nature, which is reminiscent of the more conventional physical, emotional and mental sacrifices endured by religious figures (the fakir, monk and yogi mentioned by Needleman in relation to the other ‘ways’ to self-knowledge).5 It is perhaps inappropriate, however, to view Ader in this way. Instead, Brígida Baltar sees in his work the search for ‘a kind of invisibility… a way to express his emotions with no representations’.6 For Baltar, ‘Bas Jan Ader has no fear of death or tragic situations. Or maybe his fear is so big that he couldn’t hide it. His work made connections with Nature; enormous Nature – such as Niagara Falls, the big tree that fell down and the sea into which he disappeared.’

Baltar’s A Coleta de Orvalho (Collecting Dew) places the artist in a natural environment that, like the ocean, is unpredictable and expands what Baltar refers to as the ‘body possibilities’. For Baltar, the mystery of what will happen next to Ader also occurs in her collecting actions. She writes that ‘the landscape with mist is a landscape that never is the same. You cannot see through it. And if you get closer to the mist it seems to be far. It is a kind of illusion, the impossibility, a search for invisible things, immateriality; it is the other side of a perfect, visible world with lots of images all around and things and things and things. Collecting this atmosphere is a way to internalize a feeling of new possibilities of the self with magic, without references, etc.’

Baltar’s comments reveal ways in which the ‘discipline’ of art, the art ‘work’ can be bound at some level with the search for the real self. Although the references in A Coleta de Orvalho are minimal, by collecting the dew herself, Baltar suggests a degree of subjectivity and alludes to her personal search, which is perhaps more evident in other works such as Um Céu Entre Paredes (An Indoor Heaven), which is set in her own house.

Jorge Macchi writes that ‘we make a very complicated system in search of something really miraculous, just to end up finding our own image on a broken glass.’7 For Macchi, Buenos Aires Tour ‘is a kind of self-portrait in three parts’ produced with the collaboration of María

4 ibid.: p 35 ibid.: p 26 With thanks to Brígida Baltar in conversation with the author by e-mail, September 2007.7 With thanks to Jorge Macchi in conversation with the author by e-mail, September 2007.

Negroni and Edgardo Rudnitzky, two artists who know the city very well. Macchi considers it to be a self-portrait because, ‘when all the surprise is left to one side, what you have is a very intimate approach to the city, and all the things you find create links with your own history.’

Unlike Baltar’s piece, Buenos Aires Tour includes religious imagery. This is for Macchi, however, ‘just part of this journey’; the series of postcards with the crosses ‘just an exercise on the ephemeral.’ At the same time, he is attracted to religious images, perhaps having been close to Catholic religion as a boy and certain ideas have stayed with him, including ‘a very confusing idea of death, suffering and salvation.’ As an adult, he prefers to be ‘a kind of spectator of religion’ but it is evidently part of his personal quest which revolves on the one hand around ‘things’ collected, seen, and felt in Buenos Aires but on the other attempts to grasp the ephemeral, the emotional, the cosmic.

In her introduction to Buenos Aires Tour, Negroni describes writing as ‘that inspired calm where we seek to reorganize ourselves, to unite with that inner something that belongs to the Absolute, in which everything participates.’ The same might be said of the discipline of making art, the work of the artist, which has the potential to lead to the real self. Ofelia Rodríguez describes how once she starts creating her work, she falls into a state of ‘nothingness,’ a place where she is not conscious of the rational: ‘what starts taking control of the situation is my vision of the space where the work is created. In this visual mode, I see how things exist in this space and how these parts go together to make up the whole.’8 Rodríguez is struck by comments by Bill Viola about ‘falling’ as the state in which the artist makes the best art because of the implied loss of control. A number of Ader’s works also involved falling, echoing perhaps Gurdjieff’s assertion that man must cease to become a machine if he is to attain all of the attributes of man – freedom, understanding, love and creativity.9

Rodríguez also describes how when creating Wordless, her thoughts ‘were not at all linked directly with the religious. The image of the Virgin […] appealed to me primarily because the image itself represented basic associations with popular Mexican culture.’ These sequined images were applied to the skirts of women dancing in celebration of the Independence of Mexico, for which the Virgin of Guadalupe has always been an important symbol. She admits that is not impossible that such religious images have been imprinted unconsciously on her mind and, therefore, reveal something of her own self-portrait and quest for self-knowledge.

8 With thanks to Ofelia Rodríguez in conversation with the author by e-mail, September 2007.9 Jacob Needleman. ‘In Search of the Miraculous: A Synopsis by Jacob Needleman.’ Gurdjieff International Review. Winter 1998/1999, Issue, Vol. II (2), Revision May 24 2002, p 3 http://www.gurdjieff.org/needleman1.htm (13.09.2007)

In Yolanda López’s Portrait of the Artist as the Virgin of Guadalupe, the use of the image of the Virgin is extremely conscious. Our Lady of Guadalupe is a miraculous image of Mexican origin, like López’s family, but she is also Patron of the Americas, further bridging the gap between the artist’s Mexican past and U.S. present. Like Rodríguez, López’s interpretation of this image is not straightforwardly religious. Nor is it purely feminist. By replacing the Virgin’s image with her own as a vibrant, running woman, she is undoubtedly establishing Guadalupe ‘as a powerful female icon’ and has said that she chose to transform the image ‘because I feel living, breathing women also deserve [the] respect and love lavished on Guadalupe.’10 López has also said, however, that this image is more about ethnicity than gender. Guadalupe is known also as ‘La Virgen Morena,’ ‘The dark-skinned Virgin’ and has been associated since the fifteenth century with the Aztec goddess Tonantzin who was said to have spoken in Nahuatl, a language still widespread today in central Mexico. In this way, she is a powerful example of one of the few Mexican or indeed Latin American figures that have been accepted by Europe and North America. In her investigation of this miraculous image López expresses the hope of all those whose portraits are unknown, while revealing her own search for the real self.

10 Yolanda M. López . Works: 1975-1978. San Diego, 1978. http://mati.eas.asu.edu:8421/ChicanArte_pages/YLopezIssOutl.html (13.09.2007)

<<Jorge MacchiBuenos Aires Tour, 2003

<Yolanda M. LópezPortrait of the Artist as the Virgin of Guadalupe, 2007

Brígida BaltarA Coleta do Orvalho (Collecting Dew), 2001video, 21 minutes 38 secondsGaleria Nara Roesler, Brazil

Mark BoulosThe Gates of Damascus, 2005video, 24 minutes 22 secondsArts Council Collection, Southbank Centre, London

Gilbert & GeorgeA Portrait of the Artists as Young Men, 1972video and certificate, 16 minutes 30 secondsArts Council Collection, Southbank Centre, London

Barbara HepworthIcon, 1957wood, 45.7 x 35.6 x 20.5 cmArts Council Collection, Southbank Centre, London

Yves KleinUntitled, 1991sponge and plastic, 5.5 x 5.5.x 5.5 cmArts Council Collection, Southbank Centre, London

Yolanda M. LópezPortrait of the Artist as the Virgin of Guadalupe, 2007giclee print, 50.8 x 81.3 cmUniversity of Essex Collection of Latin American Art (UECLAA)

Jorge MacchiBuenos Aires Tour, 2003postcards and guide, 21.0 x 15.0 x 6.0 cmUniversity of Essex Collection of Latin American Art (UECLAA)

Ofelia RodríguezWordless – with the Virgin of Guadalupe, 1998mixed media on canvas, 89.0 x 120.0 cmUniversity of Essex Collection of Latin American Art (UECLAA)

Zineb SediraSelf-Portrait or the Virgin Mary, 2000c-type photograph, 3 parts each 182.9 x 101.6 cmArts Council Collection, Southbank Centre, London

Mark WallingerAngel (1997)video 7 minutes 30 secondsArts Council Collection, Southbank Centre, London

List of Works

In Search of the Miraculous1 October – 8 November 2007

University GalleryUniversity of EssexWivenhoe ParkColchester CO4 3SQ

Curator: Sarah DemeloGallery Director: Jessica Kenny

Texts © the authors 2007Designed by Dean Pavitt at Loup DesignPrinted by Palladian PressIsbn 1904059562

Picture CreditsBrígida Baltar’s A Coleta do Orvalho reproduced with permission of Galeria Nara Roesler. Gilbert & George’s A Portrait of the Artists as Young Men, Yves Klein’s Untitled, Mark Boulos’s The Gates of Damascus, Barbara Hepworth’s Icon, and Zineb Sedira’s Self-Portrait or the Virgin Mary are reproduced with permission from the Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre, London. Yolanda López’s Portrait of the Artist as the Virgin of Guadalupe, Jorge Macchi’s Buenos Aires Tour and Ofelia Rodríguez’s Wordless – with the Virgin of Guadalupe are reproduced with permission of the artists and UECLAA.

P