Originally commissioned and exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, I Cling to Virtue is a mixed-media archive of objects, narrative texts and videos that reveal the intricate trajectories of the Lövy-Singh clan, a fictional East London family of mixed Jewish and Sikh descent. The project takes the grand historical, literary and cinematic traditions of the family saga as its starting point, with the artists having produced the family by mixing their own genealogies with those of affluent 20th century families both real and fictional, such as the Kennedys, the Magnificent Ambersons, the Rothschilds, and Faulkner’s Snope Family. The curatorial voice of the installation is the flawed, biased memory of the youngest-born Monarch Lövy-Singh, who proposes not a single, coherent story of his family or the century through which they lived, but rather one that is multiple and fragmentary, revealed through distilled short stories, films and ghostly objects.

In collaboration with Onkar Kular and Keith R. Jones. Films produced with Arvid Niklasson and Per Tingleff
A catalogue designed by Åbäke accompanies the exhibition.

Images of installation at the V&A, London, September 2010, photographed by David Spero














Objects (selection taken from an edition of 26 individual pieces), photographed by Diego Trujillo


Trout



7”



Manila Envelope



Storm Trooper Bar Mitzvah Cake



Pharmaceuticals



Longshoreman’s Hooks



Tricycle



Bouncing Betty



Dentures



Gloves



Toffee Hammer and Force Feeding Tube



Farm


Clips from video works