In everyday English, a catalogue of errors is a colloquial phrase used to express disappointment with or disapproval of any thing or event littered with mistakes. However, in the art world, catalogues have the more literal sense of the publications accompanying exhibitions: how then might we understand a catalogue of errors in an artistic context? The reference to art in general, and to this exhibition in particular, is made even more direct in this case since “Catalogue of Errors” is also the title of a piece from 1976/77 that John Hilliard has in an exhibition at the Zachęta National Gallery of Art.

From the perspective of this retrospective exhibition on the work of Poznań’s Akumulatory 2 Gallery—which sought to outmaneuver the over-restrictive system of communist power through an alternative or anti-logic of art—it would seem plausible that a catalogue of errors could be used in a provocatively ambiguous, or even celebratory sense.

This rich context of Ash in Crag Lough forms the backdrop to a Nov. 15 lecture by John Hilliard that will focus on his collaboration with the Akumulatory 2 Gallery and on examples from his own work to talk more widely about art and photography. In particular, he will explore photography as a representational device, constrained and influenced by its own specificity as a medium: one whose physical and optical properties may have a pronounced effect on the way an image is interpreted. What place then for errors in the practice of photography? What is the place of John Hilliard’s work in the history of the Akumulatory 2 Gallery?

And what role did Hilliard’s collaboration with Akumulatory 2 Gallery play in the development of his artistic thought and practice? In answering these questions, the lecture will explore the relations between the practice of photography and the ways in which we perceive and understand the world.

Nov. 15, 6 p.m.

Meeting with John Hilliard, accompanying the exhibition
Beyond Corrupted Eye/Akumulatory 2 Gallery, 1972-1990.

Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, 3 Małachowskiego Sq., Multimedia room
Entrance from Burschego Street
Admission free