Date: 20.11.2013
Jacek Ludwig Scarso - who lectures on London Met's BA Theatre and Performance Practice - is currently exhibiting multimedia works at the prestigious MACRO Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome, until November 30th 2013. The show, entitled Icons & Idols, is a collaboration between Jacek, alongside his company Elastic Theatre, and internationally acclaimed artist Marta Czok. The exhibition opened on October 31st: on this occasion, performers from Elastic Theatre presented special live happenings in the atmospheric spaces of the museum, formerly Rome’s largest slaughterhouse and the set of Federico Fellini’s A Director’s Notes.
Icons & Idols is an interdisciplinary journey through sacred and profane themes. Amongst a wide range of works, it features Jacek’s new video installations The Guardians, Santino and Stabat Mater, contemporary revisitations of historic religious depictions, in particular the works of Raphael and Caravaggio. The creation of these pieces included the contribution of four London Met graduates – Eshe Asante, Antony Baker, Niamh McEnhill and Daren Pritchard – as part of their professional apprenticeships with Elastic Theatre. Alongside these pieces, the exhibition features a large scale three-screen projection of JULIUS, the project that Jacek created with Elastic Theatre in collaboration with Savage Mills, which was awarded generous grants from both the Wellcome Trust and the Jerwood Charitable Foundation. JULIUS, a multichannel film exploring a coming of age story of obsessive thoughts and compulsive rituals, was recently shown at Maudsley’s Ortus Centre in London on World Mental Health Day, at White Cloth Gallery in Leeds and as part of Cutlog Contemporary Art Fair in Paris.
Icons & Idols, which has already received substantial media coverage nationally, is also the first collaboration with Romberg Arte Contemporanea, which currently represents Jacek’s works internationally.
Image from The Guardians, a video installation created by Jacek Ludwig Scarso in coproduction with Elastic Theatre (Copyright 2013)
