The exhibition, Feelings in Common: Works from the British Council Collection on display at Pera Museum, brings together works by 29 artists from the United Kingdom who have left their mark on the international art scene. This valuable collection, which does not form a permanent exhibition and is mostly lent to international exhibitions, has also been referred to as a “museum without walls.” The exhibition invites visitors to reflect on the future of art institutions, institutional collecting policies, and collections in general, while highlighting the potential of collections to forge powerful links with today’s socio-political dynamics.
The catalogue features a text by curator Ulya Soley, alongside critic and theorist Boris Groys’ text “Logic of the Collection”, which examines the politics of collecting, and Eliott Burns’ text “Navigating a Liquid Collection”, written specifically for this catalogue, in which he examines the logistics, mobility, and cultural interactions of the works in the British Council Collection through the metaphor of a “liquid” collection and their international loan circulation. The publication is accompanied by poems from C. P. Cavafy, which inspired the David Hockney series featured in the exhibition.