The Otolith Group – A Sphere Of Water Orbiting A Star

The Otolith Group – A Sphere Of Water Orbiting A Star. 

Curated by Megs Morley. 

A Sphere Of Water Orbiting A Star features significant new work by the Turner Prize nominated The Otolith Group co-commissioned by Galway Arts Centre and Hangar Artistic Research Centre, Lisbon.

‘A Sphere Of Water Orbiting A Star’, conceived by The Otolith Group in collaboration with sound designer and composer Tyler Friedman for Galway Arts Centre, features unreleased recordings of conversations between Gerald Donald of Detroit Techno duo Drexciya and Kodwo Eshun, along with films made in Galway at the mouth of the River Corrib as it enters the Atlantic Ocean.

‘A Sphere Of Water Orbiting A Star’ is an immersive audio visual environment, conceived as a guide to the imagination, exploring a liquid world orbiting a binary star system through the sonic portal of Drexciya.

The Otolith Group is an award-winning artist led collective founded by Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun in 2002. 

Their moving image, audio works, performances and installations are characterized by an engagement with the legacies and potentialities of diasporic futurisms that explore modes of temporal anomalies, anthropic inversions and synthetic alienation. 

Recent solo exhibitions include What the Owl Knows (2022-2023), Secession, Austria: Xenogenesis, Irish Museum of Modern Art (2022-2023), Dublin: Sharjah Art Foundation (2021-22) SAAG (2020), Buxton Art Gallery, Melbourne (2020): ICA, Virginia (2020), Van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven (2019): O Horizon, The Rubin Museum of Art, New York (2018): Reconstruction of Story 2, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (2018):  The Radiant, Art Gallery at Miyauch, Japan (2017): In the Year of the Quiet Sun at CASCO, Utrecht (2014): Novaya Zemlya at Museo Serralves, Porto (2014); and Medium Earth, Roy and Edna Disney at Cal Arts Theater, Los Angeles (2013). 

Group exhibitions include Le Deracinement. On Diasporic Imaginations, Z33 (2021); CC World, Haus Der Kulturen de Welt, Berlin (2020) Sharjah Architecture Triennial, Sharjah (2019); bauhaus imaginista, Haus der Kulteren der Welt, Berlin (2019); Carnegie International, 57th Edition (2018); We Have Delivered Ourselves from the Tonal. Of, With, Towards, On Julius Eastman, SAVVY Contemporary (2018); Mondialité, Villa Empain – Fondation Boghossian, Brussels (2017); Tanawuj, Sharjah Biennial 13, (2017); The Eighth Climate (What Does Art Do?), Gwangju Biennale, (2016); Endless Shout, Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, USA (2015); The Freedom Principle, Experiments in Art and Music, 1965 to Now, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2015); Rare Earth, Thyssen-Bornemisza Contemporary Art, Vienna (2015). 

Approaching curation as an artistic practice of building intergenerational and cross-cultural platforms, the collective has been influential in critically introducing particular works of artists such as Chris Marker, Harun Farocki, Anand Patwardhan, Etel Adnan, Black Audio Film Collective, Sue Clayton, Mani Kaul, Peter Watkins, and Chimurenga in the UK, US, Europe, and Lebanon.

The exhibition preview is at 2pm with an artists talk in Nuns Island Theatre at 3pm by The Otolith Group founders Anjalika Saga and Kodwo Eshun, and US musician, rhythmanalyst DeForrest Brown Jr, author of Assembling a Black Counter Culture.

Reception takes place in the Galway Arts Centre, 47 Dominick Street, at 5pm-7pm.
Afterparty is from 8pm The Galway Distillery, Merchants Road with DJ set by DeForrest Brown Jr.

All Events are free, booking is highly advised for the artists talk at 3pm: SEE HERE

Opening Reception
Sat. 13th May
2pm – Preview at Galway Arts Centre 47 Dominick Street
3pm – Artists Talk with The Otolith Group and DeForrest Brown Jr ( Nuns Island Theatre)
5pm -7pm – Reception at Galway Arts Centre 47 Dominick Street
8pm – Live DJ Set from DeForrest Brown Jr at Galway City Distillery, Merchant’s Road.

Galway Arts Centre is grateful to the Arts Council, Galway City Council, Hangar Artistic Research Centre Lisbon and the British Council Ireland for their generosity in support of this exhibition.