A handful of dust

Join OCA tutor Jayne Taylor on the 2 September in London.

A Handful of Dust is a speculative history of the 20th century, tracing a visual journey through the imagery of dust from aerial reconnaissance, wartime destruction and natural disasters to urban decay, domestic dirt and forensics.

The exhibition features works by over 30 artists and photographers including Marcel Duchamp, Walker Evans, Robert Filliou, Mona Kuhn, Man Ray, Gerhard Richter, Sophie Ristelhueber, Aaron Siskind, Shomei Tomatsu, Jeff Wall and Nick Waplington alongside magazine spreads, press photos, postcards and film clips.

Conceived by writer and curator David Campany, the exhibition takes as a starting point the 1920 photograph taken by American artist Man Ray of Marcel Duchamp’s work in progress The Large Glass (1915–23) deliberately left to gather dust in his New York studio. First published in André Breton’s seminal Surrealist journal, Littérature in 1922 and captioned as a ‘view from an aeroplane’ by Man Ray, the photograph went on to appear in various journals, books and magazines, cropped and contextualized differently each time, before the image was formally titled Élevage de poussière (Dust Breeding) (1920) in 1964.

To reserve your place please email enquiries@oca.ac.uk or alternatively to request a place on a study visit please click here and complete the form.

For study events that require a ticket, there is a non refundable fee of £10 to pay and your confirmation email will instruct you on how to do this.

Image Credit: Man Ray/Marcel Duchamp, Élevage de poussière, 1920, Courtesy © Succession Marcel Duchamp/ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2017, © Man Ray Trust/ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2017

Originally published at WeAreOCA.