Pio Abad: Splendour

Pio Abad: Splendour
Oakville Galleries in Gairloch Gardens
31.03.2019 - 02.06.2019

In Pio Abad’s Splendour, the Manila-born, London-based artist brings together a series of objects and images that draw connections between moments of political and economic upheaval—from the fall of Cold War-era dictatorships that erroneously heralded “the end of history” to the economic crises of 2008 that brought us to our current age of political disenchantment. Lifting its title from an Abi Morgan play, which takes place in the drawing room of an unnamed autocracy on the eve of its collapse, the exhibition imagines Gairloch Gardens as the setting of another scene of political decay. Splendour reflects on the roles of repetition and mistranslation in our understanding of history and asks how we might meaningfully go forward at a moment of global political unease.