TWIN PEAKS: 20TH ANNIVERSARY ART EXHIBITION

Press Release: For Immediate Use

Twin Peaks: 20th Anniversary Art Exhibition Menier Gallery, Southwark, London 29 October – 3 November 2012

David Lynch’s Twin Peaks (1990-1991) remains one of the most important television series ever made. Its distinctive combination of humour, sadness and tension still reverberates throughout our culture, influencing fashion, music and photography, as well as film and television. Now, on the twentieth anniversary of the cinematic prequel Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992), Europe’s first official exhibition of art inspired by Twin Peaks will take place in London. Eleven internationally-exhibited artists from nine different countries will display new works at the Menier Gallery in London’s Menier Chocolate Factory.

Set amidst the glorious woods and waterfalls of the Pacific Northwest, Twin Peaks revolved around the murder of a local schoolgirl, Laura Palmer. The series ran for 30 episodes across two seasons, attracting record audiences in the United States and generating a cult following throughout the world. Alongside the series’ co-creator Mark Frost, David Lynch – the director of such celebrated films as Eraserhead (1977), Blue Velvet (1986) and Mulholland Drive (2001) – crafted a world brimming with fascinating characters and unforgettable imagery. The music of Angelo Badalamenti provided a haunting soundtrack to the search for Laura’s killer, as well as the other dark and comic activities taking place in this quintessential American small town.

Curated by Suet-Ming Lau, with the blessing of David Lynch himself, this new exhibition demonstrates how the world of Twin Peaks has been interpreted and re-imagined by artists emanating from diverse backgrounds and working in a range of media. The series’ close attention to natural landscape (including the ever-present fear that there’s “something very, very strange in these old woods”) is the starting point for pieces by Barcelona’s Javier Jaén and Gregory Euclide, who hails from Wisconsin. The latter’s beautiful and uncanny rendering of a log cabin reminds us where Laura Palmer spent her tortuous last night, while Jaén has constructed spooky models combining human forms with trees. Indeed, Jaén claims that Twin Peaks gave him his first date with “the inexplicable” and left him with some sage advice for adult life: “nothing is what it seems.”

Elsewhere in the exhibition, the disorientating designs of Lynch’s famous Red Room are the catalyst for Gordon W. Robertson’s mesmerising images and for his hand-etched metallic desk object. For Japanese artist Yasuhiro Onishi, much-loved characters such as FBI Agent Dale Cooper and Sheriff Harry S. Truman have provoked a sequence of unsettling small portraits. Lizzie Vickery, who was born and raised within sight of Vancouver’s very own ‘Twin Peaks’ – a pair of pointed summits called ‘The Lions’ – has isolated the “damn fine coffee” regularly served in the Double R Diner in a photographic piece that plays with the illusion of perspective (just as the series forced us to confront multiple views of the town and its inhabitants). Hiram To, whose earlier exhibition at the Camden Arts Centre made him the first Chinese artist to receive a solo show at a British contemporary art museum, utilises the talents of photographer Dennis Yong and acclaimed Hong Kong vocalist Sandy Lam in a mysterious installation which blends Twin Peaks with Grease, the Capitol Records Building in Los Angeles and religious iconography. To will kindly donate all proceeds from the sale of this work to David Lynch’s charitable foundation.

The full list of artists participating in the exhibition is: Gregory Euclide (USA), Federico Gallo (Italy), Javier Jaén (Spain), Mengchai Lai (Taiwan), Will Maw (UK), Yasuhiro Onishi (Japan), Gordon W. Robertson (UK), Peter Russell (UK), Hiram To (Hong Kong), Lizzie Vickery (Canada), and Wu Xiaohai (China).

A fully-illustrated catalogue containing images of the artworks, biographies of all the artists, and an essay on Twin Peaks by the writer and academic Richard Martin will also be available to purchase, alongside a range of official limited-edition Twin Peaks merchandise approved by David Lynch.

Exhibition Details

Menier Gallery, 51 Southwark Street, London SE1 1RU. Monday-Thursday, 11am-6pm; Friday, 11am-8pm; Saturday, 11am-4pm. Preview event (RSVP): Wednesday 31 October, 6pm-8.30 pm.

For further information, please contact Snowbright on +44 (0)207 251 6289 or at suetminglau@yahoo.co.uk.