Tris Vonna-Michell
Tris Vonna-Michell (born 1982) graduated from the Glasgow School of Art in 2005 and continued his studies at the Städelschule in Frankfurt before settling in Stockholm, where he now lives and works, teaching at the Royal Institute of Art (KKH). Parallel to his practice, he operates – together with Diana Kaur Vonna-Michell – the publishing space Mount Analogue, which encompasses a curatorial/editing agency and an analogue studio.
Vonna-Michell’s practice invariably draws upon his skills as a seasoned storyteller. Often touching upon the autobiographical, his performances and audiovisual installations disentangle seemingly unconnected and inconsequential events in the manner of a beguiling travelogue. Finding Chopin (2005-2018), for which Vonna-Michell was awarded the Art Basel Baloise Prize, is indicative of his engrossing engagement with both the subjects he approaches and his audience. The work takes the form of a performative installation recounting a tale in which, en route to find the artist, sound poet and publisher Henri Chopin – a colleague of Vonna-Michell’s father – he takes with him the gift of a dozen quail’s eggs. The journey is interrupted by the loss of the eggs and the subsequent search for them.
In 2021, shortly after his father’s passing, Vonna-Michell received 240 boxes from his father’s residence. Their contents included a substantial body of work and documentation from his father’s activities as an artist and publisher. The process of sorting and archiving these materials has led Vonna-Michell to stage installations, most recently at Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe, and Moon Grove, Manchester. He utilises images from both his father’s archive and his own work, visibly displaying research material to facilitate the construction – or possibility – of a narrative between the two.
E.E. Vonna-Michell
E.E. Vonna-Michell (1950–2020)had been involved with counter-cultural artistic moments, including auto-destructive art, expanded cinema, and the British poetry revival movement. From the late 1960s onwards his artistic projects and collaborations ranged from poetry, sound poetry, concrete poetry, printed matter, photography, film and indeterminate publishing.
Moon Grove Exhibitions:
Tris Vonna-Michell
‘The Art of Clockmaking’
25 April to 27 June 2025