Wunderkammer

The Chamber of Discoveries

3 December 2009 - 16 January 2010

Marifer Barrero | Jon Braley | Sam Branton | Sun Young Byun |
Sarah Harvey | Miriam Jarrs | Yoo Junghyun | Claire Partington |
Henrijs Preiss | Matthew Small | Koh Sang Woo


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Sesame is pleased to announce Wunderkammer, the Chamber of Discoveries, our Christmas show bringing together exciting artists from across the world in an exhibition full of diversity and discovery. Following last year’s winter garden show, the exhibition focuses on the idea of the domestic room as a place for collecting and displaying, and of bringing diverse influences together.

Before the existence of museums, the curious of mind and collectors of the unusual would amass hoards of exotic, interesting, and downright bizarre objects from their travels on the European Grand Tour and beyond. To house these treasures, and to display them to those with equally enquiring minds, these early European collectors brought their objects together in Wunderkammers – literally, “rooms of wonders” – places where the diversity and idiosyncrasy of both other countries and the collector’s own unique taste could be exhibited, enjoyed, and studied.

The Sesame Wunderkammer elaborates on this prototype of the museum by updating it to today’s globalised world, where each individual’s home is a meeting point of international and far-reaching influences. The exhibition brings the exotic and the domestic together, with the idea that in the 21st century a domestic home has become a Wunderkammer of sorts, individually interpreted and displayed.

The artists in the show range from local, London based (e.g. Matthew Small, Claire Partington, Sarah Harvey, Sam Branton), our European neighbours (Miriam Jarrs, Henrijs Preiss), works from the “New World” (Marifer Barrero from Mexico), along with artists from South Korea, one of Asia’s most energetic emerging economies and source of some of the most vibrant contemporary art being produced today (Sun Young Byun, Yoo Junghyun, Koh Sang Woo). Each has their own exotic appeal – and each, in their unique ways, collect and juxtapose their own diverse collection of influences in creating their bodies of work.