The Tate St Ives gallery is home to a rolling programme of beautiful, fascinating and thought-provoking art. And certainly well in the thought-provoking camp is the ‘Biosfera Peluche / Biosphere Plush’ exhibition by contemporary Argentine artist Ad Minoliti which runs between 28 May and 30 October 2022 at the gallery next to Porthmeor Beach in St Ives.
Minoliti, says the gallery team, ‘draws on the rich legacy of geometric abstraction in Latin America’ and ‘presents alternative universes influenced by feminist and queer thought’ throughout the exhibition. The show also features Minoliti’s ongoing project ‘The Feminist School of Painting’, transforming part of the gallery space into an active classroom. This is all part of the artist’s first solo show in the UK.
It has also been said that this fascinating exhibition ‘has been conceived as a critical speculation’ of Biosphere 2, the world’s largest Earth science experiment that was launched in 1984 in the Arizona desert, USA. Funded by an oil tycoon, the experiment studied whether or not humans could sustain life in an artificial environment such as a space station but it has since been criticised for being an ‘extractivist colonising endeavour’ serving to enhance ‘the interests of the already powerful’.
Minoliti’s work in this exhibition, as one observer has put it, ‘intends to work in the opposite direction to Biosphere 2’ as the show’s ‘environment has been conceived as a community centre open to all, offering a space for intersectional feminist education and fantasy’. Come and take a look for yourself before or after a spot of fantastic sunbathing on the gorgeous Porthmeor Beach.