Following the success of Paul Fryer’s solo exhibition ‘Let There Be More Light’ which attracted over 4,000 visitors during London Frieze Week in 2008, All Visual Arts (AVA) announces one of the most spectacular private Contemporary art exhibitions opening at the magnificent former Holy Trinity Church designed by Sir John Soane at One Marylebone in central London.

Over a year in planning and production, The Age of the Marvellous (14th - 22nd October) was inspired by the Wunderkammer or Cabinet of Curiosities, popular in the late Renaissance through the Baroque period (ca. 1550– ca. 1700). An era characterized by a revival of learning, the sum of all of man’s knowledge could be represented in rooms filled with natural wonders, artificial exotica and relics or art works concerned with the supernatural.

The Wunderkammer ‘s particular ability to evoke the marvellous, to incite the emotions of awe, wonder, surprise and astonishment leading to curiosity and then learning was based on its ability to draw parallels and unify seemingly unrelated fields of human knowledge like Science and Art. The brilliant evolutionary biologist E.O. Wilson considered the unification of knowledge – or what he labeled ‘Consilience’ in his eponymous book published in 1998 - nothing short of imperative for the survival of the human species. 

The Age of the Marvellous features over 60 works of art, most of them especially produced for the exhibition, that display a new-found tendency for contemporary artists to look beyond the limitations of aesthetic conventions, to a varied, more cross-disciplinary approach that integrates areas of human knowledge  that exist outside the boundaries of traditional art making.

Conceived and curated by All Visual Arts Director Joe La Placa, The Age of the Marvellous is the arts organization’s third major exhibition since it was launched in 2008. The show will coincide with Frieze Art Fair 2009 held in London’s Regents Park.

To those that enquired about the catalogue that accompanied the show, the wait is now over. The book is £30 (plus shipping cost £5.00) and can be ordered via the All Visual Arts website:  www.allvisualarts.org

The introduction is by All Visual Arts director Joe La Placa and it includes an essay “The Wonder Principle: Art, Evolution and the Unification of Knowledge in the 21st Century” by the Arts and Culture editor of Dazed Digital John-Paul Pryor.

For further information please contact info@allvisualarts.org

Introduction By: Joe La Placa

Text By: John-Paul Pryor
Photography: Tessa Angus

Paperback
168 pages

Price: £30.00

Preview Catalogue