In the Temple of the Earth
Paul Purgas

Artist and musician Paul Purgas presents a new commission for Dilston Gallery, incorporating sound and materials gathered from the local park land to create an immersive installation, which builds on his ongoing research into the histories of design, music and spiritual philosophy within South Asia.

Through a multi-sensory composition of spatial and sonic elements, the project evokes the holistic, meditative and eco-conscious principles that manifested through South Asia’s prescient interpretation of Modernism, considering the movement’s awareness of environmental dialogues between architecture and design and its deep-rooted commitment to a harmonic relationship between humanity and nature. The work considers these lost threads of futurism as echoes which continue to speak into the present.

In the Temple of the Earth builds on the artist’s recent touring exhibition We Found Our Own Reality, which uncovered the utopian design and music that emerged in India post-Independence and focussed on a tape archive discovered by Purgas documenting the history of the nation’s first electronic music studio.

Watch the video recording here.

Commissioned by Southwark Park Galleries, London, and generously supported by Arts Council England, The Paul and Louise Cooke Endowment, Southwark Council Culture Together Fund, ADi and OMNI.

Biography

Paul Purgas is a London-based artist and musician working with sound, performance and installation. Originally trained as an architect he has presented projects with CTM/Transmediale (2023), Kunstverein Gartenhaus (2022), Tramway (2021) and Camden Art Centre (2020) and is a resident of Somerset House Studios. He is the editor of the essay collection Subcontinental Synthesis (Strange Attractor/MIT Press, 2023) and is one half of the electronic music project Emptyset who have presented performances at Unsound, Kraków; Berghain, Berlin; and Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg. He has produced a series of BBC Radio 3 documentaries about his research including: Electronic India (2020); Krishnamurti in England (2023); and Recording on the Nomad’s Trail (2023). He has curated programmes with Tate Britain, ICA, Wysing Arts Centre in Cambridge, the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill-on-Sea, Somerset House and Spike Island.

Paul Purgas is represented by Niru Ratnam, London.