Fellow Travellers: Liane Lang spent a month photographing and subverting Budapest’s monuments to the Soviet era.
Exhibition: Monumental Misconceptions: A Journey Through Sculptural Budapest, The Gallery Soho, London, September 27 – October 3 2010
In 2009, Liane Lang spent a month photographing Budapest’s monuments to the Soviet era.
Her task wasn’t as easy as it once might have been, given that most of her subjects of choice were swiftly torn down after the fall of Communism, leaving some statues ripped apart with only their boots left welded to plinths.
One suburban field, though, remains something of a shrine to the cause, having received so many monuments as a result of the culling that it has been renamed the Memento Sculpture Park.
Communism may not make a comeback in Eastern Europe, but architect Akos Eleod still saw the intrigue value of preserving the historically precious statues, and Lang has set about turning the works he saved at the park into often humorous, frequently unsettling installations, accompanying them with lifesize models, props and complementary sculptural efforts.
Grand Gestures, Lenin
She’s also visited a number of other sites around the beautiful Hungarian capital, capturing images from the 19th century Kerepeszi cemetery and a running track at Nepstadion.
Lang has taken some of the giant steel plated figures from Hungarian sporting history which surround the track and animated them for a video work, The Track, highlighting their dual messages of competition and camaraderie.
Admission free. The Gallery Soho, Charing Cross Road, London. An evening of artist film takes place at the gallery on September 30 2010. Call 078 4137 4735 for details on the event and opening hours.
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