Future Projects

The Stag and Hound
by Dutton and Swindells

20 January - 26 March 2010



The 'Stag and Hound' is the latest instalment of Dutton and Swindells', 'Institute of Beasts' project - a project designed to temporarily house what the artists' describe as their more errant or wild thoughts.


The works in the exhibition include objects, texts, animations and sound works which form an installation, both elegant and disturbing, that encodes a wide range of references.

Stemming from the idea of an institute being something ordered and organised whereas 'Beasts' are unknown, erratic and mythologised, Dutton and Swindells divide their institute into conceptual departments, imposing a kind of idiosyncratic order, a gesture perhaps toward taming the erratic.

Animated geometric forms and texts sit alongside inverted flower photographs, wall-drawings refer to celestial alignments, sound and music works are built by graphically re-interpreting activist slogans, a computer reads a pathetic and confessional soliloquy and a wall text appropriates spam e-mails selling 'Viagra'.


The project has evolved into a multi-layered collage in which inconclusiveness and doubt are prioritized over empirical certainties, forming the critical sentiment which lies at the heart of the project. 'The Institute of Beasts' creates its own strange, yet strategic world view with its chaotic aesthetic and sceptical notions of knowledge or knowing.

For this outing of the project 'The Stag and Hound' the artists will install the exhibition ready for the launch on 20th January and then from 20th January - 16th February will be 'in residence' altering and shifting the exhibition, creating new works and points of resonance between existing works.

The title references a tapestry 'The Stag Hunt' housed at the Cluny Museum in Paris in which the stag represents everyman and is hounded by dogs which represent the pitfalls in life such as desire, age or illness. Following on from previous instalments of the Institute project such as 'The Dog and Duck' at the Kookmin Art Gallery, Seoul, S.Korea, the title of the show at PSL could also be the name of a pub, suggesting a space of potential conviviality but also of unexpected encounters.

Events - more details coming soon!
20 Jan – 15 Feb: The artists will be working in residence at PSL
1 February: Dutton and Swindells at Pavel Büchler’s Tuesday Talk at The Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester
10 February: Soup and Cinema, 6pm at PSL
15 February: Private view and book launch, 6pm at PSL
10 March: Artists talk, 6pm at PSL