Feature: The Big Picture - Exhibition: Never The Same River (Possible Futures, Probable Pasts) at Camden Arts Centre

Published: 9 December, 2010

A NEW exhibition selected by British artist Simon Starling is the latest in a series of artist-selected shows at Camden Arts Centre. After completing a residency at the Centre in 1999, Starling returned in 2000 with a solo show. He went on to win the Turner Prize in 2005.

Never The Same River (Possible Futures, Probable Pasts) brings together works by 30 artists and designers – including Francis Bacon, Henry Moore and Ernö Goldfinger – revisiting the rich history of the Centre by showing fragments of exhibitions from the past 50 years. These works are reinstalled in the  positions they previously occupied and Starling has selected new works by artists as an imagined future for the Centre’s exhibition programme.

The ideas and methods used by Starling in his own work, as well as the writings of Jorge Luis Borges and George Kubler, form the premise of the exhibition. The works, though spatially and historically remote, all challenge our understanding of linear time. Their coming together invites us to consider how artworks prevail throughout history.

Mike Nelson has returned for a four-week period to recreate his seminal work pictured above, which he developed over a number of weeks during his residency in 1998. Collecting detritus from streets and markets, he gradually transformed Gallery 3 into a tableaux, creating a personal fictional context within the gallery space.

The exhibition is supported by The Henry Moore Foundation, Culture Ireland and Computer Aid International. Media Partner: Spoonfed Media Ltd.

• Never The Same River (Possible Futures, Probable Pasts), is at Camden Arts Centre, Arkwright Road, NW3, from 16 December 2010-20 February 2011. 

Opening times: Tuesday-Sunday 10am-6pm; Wednesday 10am-9pm; closed Mondays and bank holidays, 020 7472 5500; info@camdenartscentre.org /  www.camdenartscentre.org