Mariele Neudecker: Kindertotenlieder - Preview

Mariele Neudecker and Dominic Gray (Opera North, Projects Director) discuss Mariele's forthcoming Kindertotenlieder installation at the Howard Assembly Room.

Five specially created rooms inside the Howard Assembly Room, one for each of Romantic composer Gustav Mahler's (1860-1911) exquisite and heartbreaking songs of loss and mourning.

In this walk-through exhibition, German-born artist Mariele Neudecker uses film, sculpture and an archive song recording by contralto Kathleen Ferrier, to evoke the beauty and sadness of Mahler's Kindertotenlieder (Songs on the Death of Children). Through films that she projects into the domestic interiors, the doorknobs and fireplaces of her created rooms come alive in this stunning exhibition that captures the deepest emotions.

"'I often think they have only gone out,
And will soon be coming home again.
It's a beautiful day, don't worry,
They've only gone for a long walk." From Song IV

Neudecker, currently shortlisted as an artist for the Fourth Plinth in London's Trafalgar Square, recreates and regenerates her commission from 2005, in this the Centenary Year of Mahler's death.

"It is hard to think of another contemporary artist able to give form, and, I think consolation, to such agonizing grief. Neudecker shows herself as remarkably gifted with film as she is with sculpture... I can't think why she never wins the Turner Prize." The Observer

"Establishing the theatrical premise of a bare, unfurnished room, Neudecker's installation unfolds like a sequence of sets for an imaginary opera." The Guardian

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Mariele Neudecker
• Kindertotenlieder
• Songs on the death of children
• art installation
• opera north
• howard assembly room
• installation
• art
• video
• film
• music
• Gustav Mahler
• Trafalgar Square fourth plinth
• Kathleen Ferrier