The Things That Happen When Falling in Love

Group Show
2nd April to 20th June
BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead

Raqs Media Collective presents The Things That Happen When Falling in Love, a new commission for BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art. Based in New Delhi, Raqs comprises Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula and Shuddhabrata Sengupta. Working collaboratively as artists, writers, curators and researchers, their work spans many media and explores the relationship between contemporary art, historical enquiry and philosophical speculation.

The Things That Happen When Falling in Love was inspired by the Collective's visit to Tyneside in spring 2009. Starting points for the work are provided by the North East's maritime history, specifically recent photographs that document the giant Swan Hunter shipbuilding cranes leaving the River Tyne to be repurposed in India. Part sculpture, part poetry, part meditation, the installation incorporates found footage to become an elegy to the emotions of bereavement and longing that are felt at times of loss. Transcending geographic and cultural borders, these emotions bind the world together and create unexpected intimacies across great distances.