We are Ready for Your Arrival (2013)    [ exhibition at Raven Row, London, 2013 ]

We are Ready for Your Arrival (2013)    [ exhibition at Raven Row, London, 2013 ]

We are Ready for Your Arrival explores the materialisation, through objects, texts and images, of the processes of artistic creative production; its expectations, ambitions, coincidences, irrational leaps and failures. The manifestations of these experiences are then paralleled through references to environmental transformation and collapse.
Using an elaborate narrative about growth, decay and disaster the installation begins with the challenge of representing a 60′ palm tree through the ‘accident’ of its physical absence.  Based on the artist’s real and performed desire to install this massive palm in the centre of Raven Row, London, rupturing this grade 1 listed building, piercing the ceiling of the main gallery and emerging from the green roof outside its first floor, Chodzko constructs a heterogeneous work that weaves documentary with science fiction.  A palm tree is turned into a mulberry tree and a dialogue ensues between the insects that consume them. Their discussion of human folly, its ambition and failures, communication and miscommunication, and ideas of dissemination, entropy, precarity and environmental catastrophe are explored throughout the exhibition, showing that external events parallel psychological processes.  The architecture of Raven Row and the history of its site also help shape the network of associations between the works.  Ultimately We are Ready for Your Arrival concerns human behaviour and how we wrestle with the extraordinary surreality of our individual and collective worlds.

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We are Ready for Your Arrival, included the following individual works:

Desert Island (2013)
Palm tree, soil
18.28m x 1.5m x 1.5m

We are Sorry       (July 9, 2013)
Litho plate for full page broadsheet printing
Aluminium and ink
74cm x 60cm

The Quarantine Ship (2013)
single screen video with sound
4 mins

Like This   (2013)
Black and white mulberry trees, bamboo, cup
Silkworm cocoon stereoscopic image, 1905
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster image (Reuters), 2011
and retouching ink.

Adaptation  (2013)
Single screen video with sound
10 minutes

The Tropics of London   (2013)
(sketch for a textile pattern)
Ink on paper
60cm x 42cm

Props. For memorising the gravity of mime objects. (Flood)     (2013)
Stones, bed headboard, shelving system and ink.
1m 50cm high x 60cm wide x 20cm deep

Props. For memorising the gravity of mime objects. (Fire)  (2013)
Stones, bed headboard, shelving system and ink.
1m 50cm high x 60cm wide x 20cm deep

Slip. A Flying Prison      (2011)
Single screen video with sound
8 mins 17 secs

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We are Ready for Your Arrival (2013)  was part of a double solo exhibition at Raven Row, London, together with Canadian conceptual artist Iain Baxter&

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Related works:

Desert Island (2013)
The Quarantine Ship (2013)
We are Sorry    (July 9, 2013)
Adaptation  (2013)
Like This   (2013)
The Tropics of London   (2013)
Props. For memorising the gravity of mime objects. (Flood)   (2013) & Props. For memorising the gravity of mime objects. (Fire)      (2013)  
Slip. A Flying Prison     (2011)