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The Scream of the Strawbear Edition Tote Bag

Limited screen print edition. The Scream of the Strawbear brings together diverse yet connected themes of European folklore and their role in today’s social context

30,00 


The Scream of the Strawbear
Limited edition
Tote bags in two colours, signed and numbered

This e-book is a digital record, documenting the gathering of materials and the process of creating the project The Scream of the Strawbear. In his photographs, videos, installations and performances, visual artist Matthew Cowan surveys European customs and traditions and their continuing social function today. This interest originally stemmed from learning English ritual dances in New Zealand and has sparked an ongoing exploration of folklore and its contemporary connotations in a wider European context. A sequence of rituals, materials, costumes, plants, and museum artefacts form the central staging point of his artistic research.

In The Scream of the Strawbear, the New Zealand-born artist documents selected traditions from the German city of Giessen and the surrounding countryside, placing them in the context of contemporary art. The publication includes texts that reveal the process of artistic research involved in the work. It covers diverse yet connected themes of folklore originating from traditions in Hesse as well as historical links that cross the world from New Zealand to Europe and the United Kingdom.

Matthew Cowan collaborated with communities whose annual traditional ritual customs, such as the Strawbear and Maimann, take place close to Giessen. These community rituals provide a focus for the aesthetic material of the project. Straw, eggs, leaves, tobacco, cameras, and sound recording devices all feature as artistic motifs in the resulting exhibition at Kunsthalle Giessen.

The e-book contains extensive photographs and documents from the research and exhibition and five performance videos produced over the course of the project.

The Scream of the Strawbear was exhibited at Kunsthalle Giessen and the Oberhessisches Museum from September 7 to November 17, 2019.

Matthew Cowan

Matthew Cowan is an Aotearoa New Zealand artist, working in the realm of traditional European traditional customs. His works are photographs, videos, installations and performances, which play with the inherent strangeness of the continued popularity of long established folk customs in a modern world. In 2023 he will complete a doctoral project in artistic research at the Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki. www.matthewcowan.net

Signed and numbered edition
Green tote bag, orange screen print
White (natural) tote bag, dark green screen print
Edition of 50
December 2023
In a bundle with the e-book The Scream of the Strawbear
30,00 Euro

E-Book
English / German versions
57 pages, 67 images, 5 videos (26 min)
fixed epub (approx. 450 MB)

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