The Never Never | Advertising Campaign [ Kunstverein Harburger Bahnhof ]

FESCH.TV INFORMIERT:

THE NEVER NEVER
Artist: Jeremy Hutchison
Curator: Evelyn Simons
in collaboration with Nova Melancholia
supported by Fondazione Prada 

“Did you know – there are more Porsches in Athens than anywhere else in Europe?”
(from a phone conversation between the artist and his father)

The Never Never was triggered by a piece of fake news. It was produced in Athens by UK artist Jeremy Hutchison and Belgian curator Evelyn Simons, in collaboration with Nova Melancholia – an Athenian performance troupe. This new body of work comprises a short film, photographic series, collage paintings, performance and sculpture. It will launch at the Kunstverein Harburger Bahnhof in September 2022, before touring to Casino Luxembourg in December 2022.

In this work, a Porsche 911 is divided into eight parts and worn by Athenian performers. Like hybrids from ancient mythology, these farcical creatures emerge from the sea, navigate a series of epic landscapes before arriving at a photo studio. All this is documented by an advertising film crew, who in turn become actors in the performance.

The Never Never explores contemporary myths: fake news, luxury branding, national stereotypes and global capitalism. It examines how right-wing media used ownership of Porsches to make false and xenophobic allegations about the Greek debt crisis. Indeed, the project’s title is slang for debt: it refers to the apparently never-ending number of payments on a loan.

Collapsing incongruous visual languages – from luxury branding, museology, social media and the carnivalesque – The Never Never explores how myths circulate through culture and commercial media. In the process, it embeds itself in those same channels of circulation, albeit as a wrong-headed interloper. Financed by the Prada Foundation, the work hijacks the structure of a commercial shoot – fusing objects and bodies, Athenians and Porsches, ancient myths and marketing myths.

The Never Never has been conceived as an itinerant show. Adopting the spirit of the travelling caravan (a historic tradition within live performance), each chapter functions as a site-specific response to the situation of the gallery; each response bolstering the same ridiculous myth. Through continual repetition, it parrots the rituals of corporate marketing and capitalist spectacle: a touring show that performs the logic of a brand campaign.

For the first stop on its journey, The Never Never lands in Hamburg – the advertising capital of Germany. The Kunstverein Harburger Bahnhof is transformed by an installation that dissolves ordinary distinctions between contemporary art, luxury retail and museum display: fragments of Porsche are presented as archaeological artefacts, absurdist commercials continually advertise the show on a looped projection, and billboards across Hamburg are invaded by the human/machine hybrids. In this city of myth production, the artwork becomes indistinguishable from its publicity.

For the second chapter, the work responds to Luxembourg: one of the smallest countries in Europe and the second richest in the world, per capita. In this tiny hub of global banking, the work will explore distortions of scale. At Casino Luxembourg, monumental billboards on the gallery facade will set false expectations: the exhibition will in fact be a scale model. But when documentation circulates online, the miniature works will appear vast. This chapter examines how online and offline realities diverge, how perception is warped in virtual space, and digital myths influence the structure and beliefs of contemporary society.

Throughout 2023, The Never Never will travel to institutions across Europe. In each site, it will explore the production of contemporary myths, distorted realities and cultural stereotypes – and how these are articulated through the many layers of this project.