ARK 2000
an exhibition co-ordinated and curated by Harald Smykla and Hein Spellmann
Dilston Grove (in the former Clare College Mission Church),
southwest corner of Southwark Park, London SE16, U.K.,
3rd - 27th August, 2000.
Another view of the exhibition

Detail of the exhibition

ARK2000 was an exhibition-project celebrating the 10th anniversary of te Kunstbrücke (Artbridge) project between artists in London and Berlin. The theme of pairing for survival and propagation (of the Kunstbrücke project as much as for any initiative) was developed into the theme of paired artists and paired animals for the exhibition. Two artists in different locations and unknown to each other were given the same animal to use as their starting point or theme. The pairing of the animals echoed that of the pairing of Kunstbrücke artists and their nominees from both cities and further afield.

Hein Spellmann (Berlin) and Harald Smykla (London) were the paired curators who incorporated the 200 or so individual works into an organic installation in the former Clare College Mission Church, on the edge of the Southwark Park.

The church (1912), measuring about 33 by 8 metres and over 13 metres high was one of the first reinforced concrete buildings built in England. It fell into disuse in 1945 and since the 1970s has been used as artist's studios.


The Bermondsey Artist's Group's successful Notional Lottery bid to refurbish it's CafeGallery has meant that it has been able to develop a number of high-profile exhibitions for this building.

ARK2000 was the sixth exhibition and the three previous shows were site-specific commissions by Jo Stockham, Darrel Viner and Richard Wilson.



Laid out by the entrance was the 'stork' by Sonja van Kerkhoff & Jacqueline Wassen.

In the image on the left you can just see the top edge of it. We decided not to make it look like a stork but more like a young bird-like form to avoid any stereotypical reference to the stork image. In the Netherlands stork images are always on show in windows or on the street to indicate the birth of a baby.
A bird's eye view.

The text reads:
"You can never stand in the same shadow twice. The shadow of the stork on the surface of the water."

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At the 'feet' of the bird were a pair of human adult-size feet which people could stand on to read the texts.






Sonja's medium		art by catagory

Sonja's c.v.
last things first