BRISTOL, UK.- This winter, Arnolfini hosts the first major UK solo exhibition of Austrian artist-duo, Lois and Franziska Weinberger. The exhibition includes new commissions as well as existing works which have been selected and re-made for the Bristol context. Their practice includes sculpture, found objects, text pieces, large-scale mural drawings and maps, slide works, photography, video installations and site-specific interventions.

The starting point for the Weinbergers’ research is the idea of the garden as a metaphor for society. They refer to this as a site which is in constant flux rather than something fixed and unchanging. Within this “perfectly provisional realm”, as they term it, they investigate the interaction between the uncontrolled forces of nature and socially imposed concepts of order and value. By observing the patterns of growth of wild plants within the city, and their effect upon the structures of urban life, their work becomes a political metaphor, suggesting models for alternative ways of living.

The Garden Archive presents a large collection of slide images of wild urban plants, commonly referred to as ‘weeds’. These plants were collected, over an eleven-year period, from Central and Eastern Europe and cultivated in a garden in Vienna by Lois Weinberger. Despite being the scourge of civilised society, this wild vegetation is characterised by its capacity for survival in the most inhospitable conditions, on the fringes of urban life. For the German festival Documenta X, Weinberger re-planted these plants in the heart of the city, making a garden amongst the tracks of a disused railway line and digging up pavements around the central station in Kassel.

The exhibition at Arnolfini includes the Weinbergers’ recent Home Voodoo photographic series, as well as the Transportable Garden, the Garden Archive, a Marginal Room of drawings and found objects, and other works.

Lois (b. 1947) and Franziska Weinberger (b. 1953) live and work in Vienna, Austria. Lois Weinberger has been working as an artist since 1970. He has worked with art historian Franziska Weinberger since 1999.

Lois and Franziska Weinberger have exhibited extensively internationally. Recent exhibitions of their work include the CAC/Centre d’art contemporain, Brétigny, S.M.A.K, Ghent, the Museum der Moderne, Salzburg, and the 21st Century Museum Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan. Their work was included in the Liverpool Biennial, UK, (2004) Skulptur Biennale Münsterland, Germany, (2001) and Documenta X, Kassel, Germany (1997). Major site-specific and public commissions include a Roof Garden for the Vienna Library at the City Hall (2005) and Garden at the Lower Austria Museum, Government Section, St Pölten (2002). The Weinbergers are the recipients of prizes and awards including the RBB Bank Preis, Graz (1999), Würdigungspreis für Bildende Kunst, BKA Wien (2005) and the Tiroler Landespreis für Kunst (2006).

The exhibition is supported by The Henry Moore Foundation, Bundeskanzleramt: Kunst and the Austrian Cultural Forum. A major publication, produced by Arnolfini, accompanies the exhibition.