Ketty La Rocca

12 June - 30 September 2022

  • Has the metaphor worn itself out?

    Collage and Poetry 1964 - 1975

    Ketty La Rocca was associated with the poesia visiva (visual poetry) movement and the avant-garde activities of the Florentine Gruppo 70 and began making subversive visual-verbal collages in the 1960s, cutting and pasting images together with short text clippings. One of La Rocca’s aims was to liberate the depiction of women from its contemporary context, both in patriarchal Italy of the 1960s and in the general flood of consumer imagery emanating from television, advertising, and the cinema. Her early collage works mimic and undermine the commercial imagery of the day. She presents texts in the style of advertising slogans and media propaganda, subverting their meaning through a play on words that draws out their ambiguities, and elaborates her ideas through the pairing of such texts with images drawn from popular magazines and newspapers. These works were calls to become politically aware, to resist the exploitation of the female body and the political and clerical manipulation played out in the media at the time. She articulated these themes in her poetry which has been translated in collaboration with the Ketty La Rocca Estate.  This online exhibition presents some of key collage works alongside poetry written between 1964 - 1975, celebrating La Rocca's unique and subversive voice.

  • A special place where daily actions unfold the false conciousness of language that fuels universal paranoia deprives any alternative gesture...

    Qualcosa di vecchio, 1964, Collage on paper, 44.5 x 29 cm

    A special place where daily actions unfold

    the false conciousness of language that fuels universal paranoia

    deprives any alternative gesture of meaning

    flattens any prominence of behavior

    threatens any extraneous sentiment

    like a conveyor belt along which parallel meanings are forced to run

    to cry "help!" I have to say "help!'

    in other words!

    In this action that I would call conjugation

    I am an example to myself and to others of a total enslavement

    to language, to its most enticing infrastructures,

    I force myself to speak through a refined example

    the others that take part in the action combine both a real

    drama and my interior drama, my relation with the medium:

    captivating but sterile: language does not determine even 

    illusory

    freedom, but proliferates contagiously, creates victims that conjugate

    their very own condition and define it "you".

     

    Published in 'Data', year V, no. 16/17, June/August 1975, pp. 68/69

    Text conceived on the occasion of the performance 'Le mie parole, e tu?' at the Galleria Nuovi Strumenti in Brescia in March 1975 and at the Galleria La Tartaruga in Rome in April 1975.

     

  • has the metaphor worn itself out? as if it weren't enough, it weren't sufficient, to highlight the metaphorical aspects of...

    Ma non cerco abbastanza, 1964-5, Collage on paper, 48 x 66 cm

                      has the metaphor worn itself out?

                      as if it weren't enough, it weren't sufficient,

                      to highlight the metaphorical aspects of an image even before it assumes

                      them:

                      impossible before 

                      to intensify the metaphor , once again even tautology has lost the challenge

                      language assume the role of global language through a 

                      metalinguistic dimension

                      language does not exist, everything is metalanguage

                      articulated language transferred from the deputed site of parallel lines,

                      reduced to the sign of an image, it is placed in its authentic and inalienable

                      dimensionas eternally reductive

                      the attempt of language to wear out, to depose renders concrete

                      a real situation

                      a discourse, the paradox of metalanguage, marks the images, a pretentious

                      global discourse transported by gesture, the gesture of the hand writing on

                      the page

     

                     1975 / unpublished in Ketty La Rocca's lifetime

     

  • safe on bends safe in braking safe at speed 50 years' experience maladjusted youth conspirisy mania has reached America treasures...

    Le ragioni di un mito, 1964-5, Collage on paper, 50 x 35 cm

    safe on bends

    safe in braking

    safe at speed

    50 years' experience

    maladjusted youth

    conspirisy mania

    has reached America

    treasures of Christian art

    the bride drawn by lot

    in all newsagents

    weak local demand for Africa

    with the Alitalis jets

    difficult market for scooters

    at 200 kilotons

    some think that the Chinese have landed in California 

    widow Rossi conveys her thanks

     

    Published in La Nazione of 21 May 1966

  • the woman is in the bare hands like the shiny body that seeks words for a sign and the complaint...

    È quello che ci vuole, 1964-65, Collage on paper, 44.5 x 30 cm

     

                                                                the woman is in the bare hands

                                                                like the shiny body that seeks words

                                                                for a sign

                                                                and the complaint will not be believed 

                                                                above the cold feet

                                                                elegant ruins will form

     

                                                                S. O. S. save human kind

       

                                                              1964 / Unpublished in Ketty La Rocca's lifetime

  • 100 washing machines with perfect round black holes a man falls out of each hole the double-breasted suit is shrink-proof...

    Gli enigmi, 1964-65, Collage on paper, 70 x 49.5 cm

    100 washing machines with perfect round black holes

    a man falls out of each hole

    the double-breasted suit is shrink-proof

    the tie is designer

    the mout is open and so are the arms and legs

    he's still available

    the mongrel pup is bored

    he turns his head

    he doesnt know how ridiculous he is with the bucket

    in his mouth on the bench he doesn't claim

    to be pathetic

    it's all perfectly rational

     

    Unpublished in Ketty La Rocca's lifetime

  • Please contact info@amandawilkinsongallery.com for a price list

    Amanda Wilkinson Gallery will present the performances Veline, 1967 and In principio erat verbum, 1970-72 on Friday 8 July 2022 as part of Performance Exchange. A solo exhibition of Ketty La Rocca's work will open on Wednesday 13 September 2022.

     

    Exhibtions and performances 2022/3

    “She Bam Pow POP Wizz”
    Kunsthaus Graze, Austria
    April 14 2022 – August 28 2022

    “Re-performnce: In principio erat verbum”
    CORPO.doc | performance e arti visive 
    come play with us?

    Isola di San Servolo – Venezia 
    June 18 2022


    “No Master Territories - Feminist Worldmaking and the Moving Image”
    HKW - Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin Germany
    June 18 2022 – August 28 2022

    “Ketty La Rocca. Se io fotovivo. Opere 1967-1975”
    CAMERA - Centro Italiano per la Fotografia, Torino 
    July 14 2022 – October 16 2022

    “Around Arte Povera 1960-1975, Photography, film, video”
    Le Bal / Jeu de Paume, Paris, France
    October 11 2022 – January 29 2023

     

    Ketty La Rocca‘s works are included major museum collections such as Museum of Modern Art New York, Centre Pompidou Paris, GAM Turin; Galleria d’Arte Nazionale Rom, Centre of Art and Media Karlsruhe, Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.