Continental Breakfast

Chloe Briggs • Gordon Cheung • Chris Dabrowolski • Anka Dabrowska
• Emma Holden • Camilla Wilson • Akiko Usami

Continental Breakfast is an international co-curatorial and multidisciplinary project dedicated to the newest proposals in the field of contemporary visual art. At the "First CEI Venice Forum" (June 2003) organised by the Trieste Contemporanea Committee, it was planned as a joint activity of the partner institutions for 2004-2005 to lead to a series of exhibitions opening simultaneously in a number of selected venues in Autumn 2005, identifying as the main theme the idea of identity and the perception of the "other" in and beyond the new Europe.
Emblematic is the title of the project which defines a breakfast shared all over Europe without bounderies: a menu which seems the same everywhere but truly acquires diverse tastes and values through local cultural variations.
Continental Breakfast 2004-2005 is under the auspices of the regional intergovernmental organisation "Central European Initiative" and aims to become a starting point for the development of future cultural networks.

Seven Seven has curated a show of artists from a range of different national backgrounds who practise in the UK, reflecting the surge of creative energy that has taken place as a result of the fusing of ideas and influences from diverse places. Each of the artists deals with the theme of identity from the perspective of their own cultural heritage or the experience of living in a multi-cultural society.

The group exhibition will take place in three galleries of Maribor Art Gallery, (UGM), the second largest government funded, public gallery in Slovenia. Seven successful, young UK based artists will be in the show. The show will contain up to 50 works including sculpture, ranging in size from a tiny beaker to a fridge-freezer, painting,and photography. The exhibition forms part of a larger project called ‘Continental Breakfast’ that is taking place across Europe from 2004-2006. The theme linking all the exhibitions and events of ‘Continental Breakfast’ is encrypted in the title, suggesting a common menu that acquires diverse tastes and values through local cultural variations. The title is used as a metaphor for new and old identities in the changing face of Europe.

Currently participating institutions are:

Belgrade Cultural Centre, Serbia and Montenegro
BM Contemporary Art Centre, Istanbul, Turkey
Institute for Contemporary Art, Zagreb, Croatia
Kunsthalle Wien, Austria
UGM, Slovenia
Museum of Contemporary Art, Budapest, Hungary
MUSEUM, Institute for Art Production, Distribution and Publishing, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Tallinn Art Hall, Estonia
Teine Tants, Tallinn, Estonia
Trieste Contemporanea, Italy
Villa Manin, Centre for Contemporary Art, Passariano, Italy
Seven Seven, London

Initiated at the first ‘CEI Venice Forum in 2003’.

Umetnostna Galerija Maribor
Strossmayerjeva 6
Maribor
Slovenia

tel.: 386 2 229 58 60
fax: 386 2 252 77 84