Alex Hartley participates in the 2017 Yokohama Triennale

4 August - 5 November 2017

Titled “Islands, Constellations and Galapagos”, the sixth edition of the Triennale explores ideas of connectivity and isolation. Alex Hartley participates with Nowhere Embassy.

In 2004, while participating in an expedition to the High Arctic, Alex Hartley searched for and discovered an unmapped island that had emerged from a retreating glacier in the waters north of Norway. The work exhibited here is a continuation of the project Nowhereisland (now here is land), in which the artist sailed the island material out into international waters and declared it an independent state and then towed it all the way to the UK. The Nowhere Embassy is a mobile building transported atop a vehicle, appearing here and there just like an island adrift.  Visitors are invited to visit the Embassy and stand on the island’s Arctic rocks, transporting them from somewhere to Nowhere. During the exhibition, Hartley solicits and records propositions from the public, declared whilst standing on the Nowhere territory and those who contribute are given a small stone that formed part of the original arctic island. The project provokes thoughts about the nature of nations, territories and belonging.

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Image: Alex Hartley, Nowhere Embassy, © the artist