David Austen | TOTAH

The Island

 

TOTAH Pantelleria

Center of Scauri

Italy

 

5th July - 30th August 2026

Opening hours: Monday - Sunday, 10am - 1pm; 5pm - 8pm 

 

The island, an exhibition of recent works by London-based artist David Austen. Made predominantly following a stay at the TOTAH residency in Pantelleria this past spring. Similar to the storied history of Pantelleria itself, Austen's iconography sustains a tension between elementality and complexity, between the weathering changes history inflicts on a place and the eternal forms that persist apart from all variation and decay. Many of the details that fill out Austen’s etchings, paintings, and text-based works derive from observational particulars gathered on the island itself.

 

Whether figurative or descriptive, the notion of an island connotes a world apart: something disconnected from life, yet which also defines itself in terms of this disconnection. Throughout The island, Austen returns to this condition again and again, translating the lived realities of Pantelleria —its persons, flora, and the mythologies that haunt it.

 

For more information, please visit the link below.

July 4, 2026