He recently undertook a residency in St Ives as part of the Tate St Ives Artists Programme.
This exhibition presents a series of short films documenting projects from ten years of van Hoorn’s Urban Songlines series. 'Songlines' is a spiritual system of songs and storytelling relating to land practiced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia. Influenced by this tradition, van Hoorn researches and consults with communities around the world to produce Urban Songlines projects. They result in performances, scores or audio recordings, focusing on our relationship to place and the public domain.
Van Hoorn’s latest work, 063 Urban Songline (Another Hurling of the Silver Ball) | Latitude: 50.204794° N – 50.214926° N / Longitude: -5.482636° W – -5.493938° W 2019, is based on the annual St Ives Feast Day tradition of ‘hurling’, where a small silver ball is chased through the town. Recreating the ball at a much greater scale, van Hoorn has collaborated with residents to invent a unique journey through St Ives. Following a live performance, audio extracts from the work will be played throughout the summer at Tate St Ives and a film of the event will be shown as part of this exhibition.
Van Hoorn was resident at Porthmeor Studios, St Ives in February as part of the Tate St Ives Artists Programme. 063 Urban Songline is supported by The National Lottery Heritage Fund and The Mondriaan Foundation.
Allard Van Hoorn, 067 Urban Songline (Displaced Harmonies) | Latitude: 47.919292° N – 40.692278° N / Longitude: 106.920722° E – -74.001904° W, 2018, 5th Land Art Biennial Mongolia, video still
Allard Van Hoorn, 052 Urban Songline (Lusophonic Storyboard) | Latitude: 38.695936° N – 38.696177° N / Longitude: -9.193214° W – -9.193756° W, 2017, MAAT, Lisbon, Portugal, video still
Allard Van Hoorn, 032 Urban Songline (Excessive Machine) | Latitude: 41.693521° N – 41.693646° N / Longitude: 44.810989° E – 44.811070° E, 2015, 2nd Tbilisi Triennial, Georgia, video still
Allard Van Hoorn, 028 Urban Songline (Alternative Instruction for Extraterrestrial Life for Playback of the Golden Records Aboard the Voyager spacecraft) | Latitude: 45.572021° N – 45.572787° N / Longitude: 8.055120° E – 8.056332° E, 2015, Fondazione Pistoletto, Biella, Italy, video still
Allard Van Hoorn, 020 Urban Songline (Marble Game) | Latitude: 39.102759° N – 39.102907° N / Longitude: -84.511896° W – -84.512164° W, 2014, Rosenthal Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati, US 2014, video still
