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ARCHIVE 2001 |
Cedar Lewisohn
Dub Down The Walls Of Babylon
19 September to 19 October 2001
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In his second London solo exhibition, Cedar Lewisohn used sound and image to create an intriguing exhibition that echoes contemporary realities.
At 198 Gallery, Lewisohn displayed images inspired by materials normally associated with other uses, such as day-glo pricing stickers and gaffer tape. He uses these readily available materials to create unselfconsciously beautiful abstractions that are bright, playful and rhythmic.
Complementing the Hip Hop aesthetic of these two-dimensional works, another room contained a new sound installation that suggests narratives, evoked emphatic emotion and seduced through the use of the human voice. Hearing the scripted dialogue spoken in Jamaican patois, the audience was caught in the crossfire of a verbal onslaught that had an ambiguous relationship to the images nearby, and at the same time served as a reminder of the exhibition's local Brixton context.
Lewisohn has previously been commissioned by the South London Gallery to take part in the Route 12:36 buses project, for which he made a People's Choice artwork in response to questionnaires that he had an actress in Victorian dress distribute on a bus. Other past works include placing a full-page advertisement extolling the usefulness of his mother in Frieze art magazine, staging an ambient boxing match in a church and paying a stripagram to keep her clothes on and distribute comic-book bibles.
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Carnival Connections
in collaboration with Carol Chin and Family Friends
Supported by Sir Walter St. John's Educational Charity
Workshops 6-8, 13-15 August 2001
24 August to 8 September 2001
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" I suppose you could call me a post-Windrush child. I arrived in 1955 - landing in Liverpool on the 19th October of that year. We, my mother and I, traveled over by ship, and our journey lasted twenty-one days. We stopped to pick up passengers in Barbados. My family home was a hubbub of activity especially at the weekends. Friday and Sunday was 'open house' to Trinidadians who were already living here as well as those who had already arrived. It was a place to catch up on the latest gossip, listen to the sounds of Sparrow and Kitch, enjoying souse and roti. Another aspect of the socializing was the discussions about Carnival or Mas as we called it and the smell and sounds of the steel pans being made and tuned in our cellar."
Carol Chin is a Trinidadian artist, whose creative practice focuses on the arts and history of Carnival. She is a trained art teacher who has taught in the Caribbean and schools in south London. She has also held Carnival workshops at the Horniman Museum in London and in other museums across the country.
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Reggie Pedro
mudfoot
20 June to 20 July 2001
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Reggie Pedro, who is already well known for his images that have been used for numerous Gomez album and single covers, showed a body of new large-scale paintings which depicted 'the everyday pursuits, concerns and experiences of people' within our society. He is concerned with 'a much more mundane, ordinary aspect of our existence, the beautiful everyday things that most of us take for granted, as well as the fundamental aspects of our lives.'
The paintings show a confident and bold use of colour, often combining 'realistic' representation with more graphical features, such as outlines, flat planes of colour, and text. These techniques serve to create multi-layered images that trigger the viewer's imagination through their suggestions of possible narratives.
His paintings are the site of tension between representation and creative intervention, between seriousness and lightness:
'My work spans areas of our lives which deal with civil unrest, love, boredom, isolation, exuberance, spirituality, to name the most obvious things that I am trying to tackle. There is a lot of struggle that takes place in the creation of my work. Struggles between figuration and semi-abstraction [....] I am trying to portray our experiences as honestly as possible without losing sight of my creative artistic endeavours.'
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Barby Asante
I Accept Your Image. I Am You.
Residency 12th April to 12th May 2001
Exhibition 17th May to 9th June 2001
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Barby Asante’s work places the viewer at the centre of the artistic process through physical interactive experiences. Asante's working process addresses issues of how we define personal identity and self-expression through comparison, competition and aspiration. Through her work she explores the manipulation of image in our media-saturated environment. How do these images affect self-image? How do the different spaces in which we present ourselves affect our everyday interactions with others?
Asante devised three performative interventions under the collective banner of I Accept Your Image. I Am You. Text pieces were placed in the bathrooms, fitting rooms and other private spaces in public places such as restaurants, bars and shops in the locality. Some carry fictitious advertising slogans such as ‘Why Wear It If You Won't Show It’. Others show typical thoughts men and women often have in such settings.
In Wig Therapy Asante took on the persona of a wig therapy consultant at a hairdressing salon. Participants booked appointments with her as you would for a haircut. Interacting with clients, she demonstrated how image transformation can affect personality and mood. The third element was an open invitation to share stories, discuss and document what constitutes a Perfect Saturday Night. The actions, reactions and interactions of the participants fed into the work that was exhibited after the residency.
The working process and the work created for the exhibition highlighted how we adjust our individual identities to areas that offer us greater comfort and freedom. The artist feels that our comsumption of images can inscribe our identities on the surface of our selves. To Asante, this artful disguise of our identities hides who we are and sometimes who we really want to be.
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Me and my Image
in collaboration with Claudette McKenzie-Bassant
and Grinling Gibbons Primary School
13 March to 6 April 2001
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This project enabled a group of pupils from Grinling Gibbons Primary School to participate in an artist-led project which explored issues of identity within a multi-cultural framework in a professional gallery environment. The children visited the space in advance of the project and then created a body of work specifically designed for installation in the gallery. The project was designed to achieve a number of goals.
It aimed to raise intercultural awareness with mixed minority and majority students through facilitating a questioning process and giving pupils the time and space to investigate the issues raised through creative means.
A Teachers' Pack was produced to accompany this project, which will facilitate the dissemination of information to other teachers for use in the classroom. The artist also hosted an INSET for teachers on the ways in which cultural awareness can be raised in the classroom through projects which link with the National Curriculum.
The project demonstrated an innovative approach to gallery-based art education with partner organisations such as schools in order to extend the learning environment available to pupils.
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Mandy Wan
The Needle Woman
30 January to 2 March 2001 |
Chinese artist Mandy Wan’s work explores, through personal memories, the way the past can make an indelible imprint on a person’s life in the present. Having grown up in a strict, traditional family environment in Hong Kong, her subject matter is often culturally specific – one aspect of her heritage she has focused on is the practice of foot-binding. At the same time, the artist believes that her work holds meaning for people of different cultures, pointing out ‘how essential the past is to make sense of one’s own present.’
By using a variety of media, from two-dimensional media such as photography and drawing to three-dimensional ones such as ceramics, Wan investigates the different facets of the relationship between the past and the presen.
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