THE SECOND CHARADE
Seventh Gallery
January 2020
The installation The Second Charade adopts the structure of a board game to explore the methods we use to record and understand history and time. For this exhibition, Katie Paine seeks to trouble the power structures inherent within the institutions that preserve and disseminate information. During the early Middle Ages, the Church acted as a gatekeeper for the majority of printed material. The advent of book–binding and the birth of illuminated manuscripts led to the amassing of transcribed texts that formed a cornerstone of the canon of Western knowledge. This project references the theological reforms now known as The Dissolution of the Monasteries (1536-1541): an occurrence during which the Crown destroyed monastic libraries, purging written material it considered deviant or blasphemous. This exhibition imagines a space in which the accepted linear narrative of history can be unpacked and possibly reconfigured.
Images courtesy Aaron Rees
