‘Tris Vonna-Michell’

In the presence of the artist.
 

Tris Vonna-Michell (England, 1982) is known for his vocal live performances, dense in language and time and taking shape through film, photography and scenographic installations.

In his films Registers and Smoke & Mirrors, he combines storytelling with images and audio recordings from a journey made to Japan in 2008. Places like Turin, Essex and Stockholm are also embedded in these two multilayered works developing the idea of the situationist dérives. Vonna-Michell's rapid and poetic monologues are travelogues full of impressions and experiences from the urban maze of foreign places. But images remembered and retold aren’t the same as those we see and hear.

A key-figure in his work, and central to his new exhibition at Jan Mot, is the experimental poet and publisher Henri Chopin (1922–2008). A poète sonore who performed his sound poetry using a tape-recorder as his instrument for developing a radical approach, Chopin encouraged poetry and literature to make use of new media, to overcome the hegemonic power of the ‘word’ as we know it and to emancipate themselves from the page into the sonic space. Henri Chopin gave his last performance on 15 December 2007 at BOZAR.

Tris Vonna-Michell studied at Glasgow School of Art and Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main. Recent solo exhibitions include Galeria Contempôranea / Fundação Serralves (Porto, 2017), La Verrière (Brussels, 2017), Presentation House Gallery (Vancouver, 2015) and 8th Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art (2015). Tris Vonna-Michell was nominated for the Turner Prize (2014) and Hugo Boss Prize (2012). He lives and works in Stockholm.

On the occasion of Tris Vonna-Michell's exhibition at Jan Mot, 08/11 – 01/12. Listening session, by Marc Matter and Tris Vonna-Michell at 7pm on 7 November 2018 at Jan Mot.