This autumn it will be swarming and buzzing at the Verbeke Gallery in Antwerp! Artists' duo STARTEL will create a installation with living flies. From maggots to pupae to a work of art: the unbridled vitality of this mere 7 day flies live cycle is the starting point of this remarkable installation.

What would you do when your life only lasted 1 week? The banality of existence, finiteness and the urge to leave a mark behind, are the themes of this exhibition.

The Verbeke Gallery will be a laboratory in which large amounts of the Calliphora vomitoria (blue bottle fly) will be breed. In a closed off tent flies will be led to sheets of paper by means of luminous food and lured in by fluorescent illumination. They will leave their track behind through a specially developed ink and their lives passage will be saved for eternity. Alongside this installation, results of earlier fly installations and works made from and by dead flies will be shown.

The artists duo STARTEL, founded in 1995 by Jan Starken and Mark Schotel, is fascinated by the essence and creation of life. Their installations with living flies were shown before at e.g.. Arti et Amicitae (Amsterdam), the Verbeke Foundation (Kemzeke) and Retort Art Space (Amsterdam).

Address 
Leopold de Waelstraat 37 
2000 Antwerp 
Belgium

Opening hours 
Thursday - Saturday, 2pm - 7pm

www.verbekegallery.com