Von Calhau!

For over a decade, Marta and João have been collaborating under the (shifting) name of Von Calhau!. Recalling this elusive signature, the duo’s practice flows between different formats and media, being mostly recognised by their sound and moving image installations as well as their performances.

Von Calhau!’s awareness of the world’s instability reflects their singular approach to language, embedded in contradiction and in permanent transformation. This sort of conceptions are made clear by constant references to the visual and connotative playfulness of concrete poetry, which frames their general comment on reality. Their accomplished mirroring between naming, choice of media and body of work translates the complementary nature of their practice which produces the humorous, surreal and visceral cosmos they inhabit and propel.

Website // Youtube // Bandcamp

Dullmea

Layers and spirals that overlap, shift and reach a place that wants to get to another place. Sometimes there’s light, sometimes there’s not. A “song without words” made of fragments of a lost language, of a crowd. “Hemisphaeria” is the result of two years in the laboratory, a world that invented itself and became a narrative. This work is structured in two hemispheres: a polyptych of six movements and a triptych.

Website // Youtube // Bandcamp

Paula Rego: Obedience and Defiance at MK Gallery 

13 June to 22 September 2019

Showing works spanning her entire career since the 1960s, this will be the first major retrospective of Rego’s work in England for over 10 years. The exhibition includes previously unseen paintings and works on paper from the artist’s family and close friends, which reflect Rego’s perspective as a woman immersed in urgent social issues and current affairs.

About the season:

“The events programme for the exhibition has been deeply infused by Paula Rego’s independent spirit of defiance: Collaborative, diverse and explorative, the path trailed by the generation of artists present, has been opened up and enlightened by Paula Rego’s beacon of creative autonomy and freedom.

We feel the programme is therefore, as much an atmospheric companion for the retrospective, as it is a tribute to Paula Rego’s deep, and long lasting influence in cutting through the thick air of Portugal’s “dusty” legacy of political dictatorship at many levels. Then and now, Paula’s fearless art touches, enlightens and expands.” 

Generously supported by Camões Institute.