Deceit

Deceit investigated the importance placed on truth by artists and audiences alike. The exhibition questioned the extent to which truth lies in the interpretation of a work and, once found, whether that truth is in reality a deceit.

In Italo Calvino’s novel Invisible Cities, the storyteller Marco Polo is charged by the emperor Kublai Khan with walking his lands and recounting tales of their cities. To the reader, and ultimately to Khan, those tales seem to resonate only from Polo’s imagination. Through this deceit Calvino investigates truth and interpretation, leaving Khan in a paradox, unable to decipher the real from the imaginary.

Each artist in the exhibition took a direct and distinctive approach to deceit through process, interpretation, imagination or narrative. Like Polo, they forced the viewer to ask, ‘Do I believe what I am seeing or hearing?’ Like Khan, the viewer was left in an eternal paradox balanced on the thin line between deceit and truth.

Artists: Warren Garland, Tina Hage, Liane Lang, Keh Ng, Imogen O’Rorke, Jo Ying Peng, Saad Qureshi, Olivia Reynolds, Valentin Hertweck and Matthew Stock.

Deceit formed part of Hackney Wicked Festival in Queens Yard, near Elevator Gallery. The festival continued during the day on 31 July and 1 August 2010; the nearest station was Hackney Wick.