The Sleepover - The Common Guild

Presented by Viborg Kunsthal

The Sleepover - The Common Guild: We are more-dimensional by Michael Stumpf

The third and last exhibition in ‘The Sleepover’ is by the Glasgow-based visual arts organisation, The Common Guild, and is part of Aarhus 2017. Following a residency at Viborg Kunsthal in 2016, The Common Guild presents an ambitious solo exhibition by Glasgow-based artist Michael Stumpf. Stumpf's sculptural installation We are more-dimensional is a complex collection of cast, carved, sewn and found objects. Each with their own resonance - from Viborg's specific geology, to the poems of Ursula K. Le Guin, and the zeros and ones of binary coding - Stumpf's works use sculpture to pose questions about the material and technological reality of the world we currently inhabit.

For this exhibition, Stumpf has worked with The Animation Workshop to develop an augmented reality that animates a hand-blown glass vessel - an otherwise static object. Through digital means, he both seriously and humorously suggests that the object itself embodies stories that are otherwise invisible to us. Here, as in much of his previous work, Stumpf combines suggestive narrative fragments to create newly constructed myths for our time.

About the artist
Michael Stumpf (born in Mannheim, Germany) studied Sculpture at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe (1996-2001) and received an MFA from the Glasgow School of Art (2004). His work has been exhibited across the UK and in Germany, US, China and Ireland. He was a co-founder of the artist-run space kaiserpassage21a in Karlsruhe and he is currently a member of the artists' collective, Poster Club.

About The Sleepover project
The Common Guild was invited to participate in ‘The Sleepover’ as part of Viborg Kunsthal’s research into new ways of thinking about art institutions and their resources. The starting point was a stay in the Kunsthal´s artist residency, where a number of artists and curators have developed new ideas and concepts for exhibitions since 2015. The outcome in 2017 is three exhibitions, where the Kunsthal´s framework, exhibitions and networking are rethought.