Ruins represent an intrinsic ambivalence: they are at the same time victims and survivors of the destructive time. It is the transience of beauty, the impermanence of things that has always fascinated the human mind and that, through the iconography of Vanitas, tried to foreshadow the terror of death, especially in times of war. This same language is resurfacing today, through different media and forms, in the works of contemporary artists who rework the legacies of the conflicts that have plagued the last century. A century marked by wars that strongly destroyed even the stuff built to survived the passing of time, inexorably changing the world and the rhythms of life. The incessant oscillation of the clock hand between two fixed points, photographs – family portraits- with erased faces, vases marked by cracks, skulls, ashes and flames, impressions of what we were: these are the elements that thanks to the work of the artists allow us to question ourselves about our impermanence, fragility and decadence, in the suggestive setting of the Castle of Duino.

Artists: Boris Beja, Claudio Beorchia, Lorenzo Bordonaro, Silvia Cavallari, Cosima Montavoci, Angela Alexander-Lloyd, Stelios Manganis, Nathalie Vanheule.

I am delighted to announce that Transportal will remain available to play for the foreseeable future! Project curator Cara Jean Flynn and organisers Canary Wharf Group PLC would like to permanently house the piano at Canary Wharf. This is brilliant news, as even more people will be able to experience the work, which is currently being exhibited at Canary Wharf Crossrail Station, West End Lobby, 1st Floor.

Impermanence is the first of three appointments with the Vanitas exhibition cycle. Impermanence accompanies the visitor through a suggestive narrative, dedicated to the concepts of memory -even linked to war experience- and loss of identity: the works bare the impermanence of the human being, with an explicit reference to iconographic elements such as the dust, the gesture of erasing and the slow disappearance of contours and figures. In the attempt to capture the inexorable flow of the time, the works exposed are able to evoke ancient universal feelings, representing the fugacity of life, and suggesting the role of personal and familiar memory as an antidote to cancellation.

Artists: Claudio Beorchia, Sylvia Griffin, Coral Woodbury, Stelios Manganis, Lorenzo Bordonaro, Silvia Cavallari, Mario Loprete, Anne O’Callaghan, Carola Minicleri.

Some good news. Art Director Chiara Isadora Artico has informed me that I have been selected to exhibit in Venice/Treviso in 2018/2019, as part of an International art festival on 20th century conflicts. B#SIDE WAR festival promotes an across-the-board combined reflection on the communal past of the 20th century conflicts. The festival is attended by researchers, curators, museums and cultural institutions, involving a network of 64 international partners.