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ARCHIVE 2003 |
Ambush Street
Artists: Steve Williams, Stevie Deas, Brian Hodgson, John Askew, Semonara Chowdhury.
6 to 30 November 2003
Venue: Unit 7E2 Seager Buildings
Brookmill Road / Deptford Bridge
London SE8.
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Standing out in contrast with contemporary art that revolves around popular culture, five artists' works responded to recent local and global events that have contributed to the rise of the culture of fear. Installation, painting and video commented on the effect of the information dissemination onslaught by state and media as experienced by ordinary people at street level, presenting a group of timely works that engaged with current realities.
Steve Williams created an ambitious new installation work in the industrial space of the Old Seager Distillery. Using painting, sculpture, text and sound, he created an interactive installation containing the narrative of his own bizarre experience of involvement in a terrorist alert.
An intriguing polygonal structure into which the viewer can enter, Stevie Deas's State of Emergency Bunker simulates the virtual environment of a computer game, asking questions about the media representation of war and terrorism and its effects on people's perceptions of these events.
When Brian Hodgson made his action Self-Righteous Attacker, troops were about to enter Iraq. He destroyed images of crowded public places in London screenprinted onto sheet metal, externalising the fears in the minds of the public in an explosive act of catharsis. In this exhibition he showed the resulting work, and a video made from the action.
The inuring effect of media communication is explored in John Askew's overwhelming creations. Through a process of repetition, he transforms emotionally charged images from television coverage of the war in Iraq into a kaleidoscopic pattern, causing simultaneously an intense visual impact and the overshadowing of the subject in the image.
Semonara Chowdhury's changing neon text is deceptively simple, yet acts as a catalyst for thoughts relating to the actions of 'democratic' states and the consequences of their interventions in global affairs. It also focuses the viewer's mind on how particular words can be used for propaganda purposes, to represent facts and events in the most expedient light.
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Raúl Piña
Journey to the Moon
27 September 2003
Venue: Events Area, First Floor,
Elephant & Castle Shopping Centre
Elephant & Castle, London SE1 6TE
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'The artist, having journeyed to hell ... will go up to the moon guided by those who have preceded him in the attempt. He will consult with the rabbit on how to transmute horse dung into gold ...'
Raúl Piña revealed his new performance, Journey to the Moon, at the unusual venue of Elephant & Castle Shopping Centre in south east London, in the heart of a very multicultural community.
The Mexican artist who now lives and works in London mixes elements from prehispanic Mexican culture and elements from his adopted context, European culture. He draws out universal symbols that exist in the contrasting traditions, and reflects on the relationship of human beings to the cosmos.
In this performance, he used imagery such as a silver-coloured Mexican wrestling mask (the artist is from Pachuca, the site of an old mine, and silver is also the colour of the moon), and a recurring motif in his work, the rabbit. The horse was a symbol for war.
Piña's performance was a metaphorical 'ascension to the supreme "level" of intelligence to "ask" the rabbit how to transmute the terror of war into visual beauty': a human quest for knowledge and harmony. In his Journey to the Moon, the artist presented an expression of hope that people might learn to live in a way that moves more from the material towards the spiritual, in harmony with the world around them. His wish is more pertinent than ever in the contemporary climate of global capitalism and wars.
Raúl Piña has participated in many group exhibitions in London and Mexico. This is his second solo event in London. His work is in the University of Essex Collection of Latin American Art.
With thanks to the Elephant & Castle Shopping Centre
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Renata Fernandez
Everyday Epic
14 March to 17 April 2003
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"The hard, bright, jewel-like colours are those of tropical Latin America, while her preoccupation with the representation of sport as epic conflict suggests the need to find in English culture something that approaches the colour, passion and dramatic expressiveness of life in her native country." (Michael Unwin, 2001)
198 Gallery presented the first solo exhibition in London of striking and playful paintings the prolific Venezualan artist Renata Fernandez, who has exhibited her work internationally in Venezuela, Portugal and Spain.
Having previously made large urban landscape 'murals' in Caracas with metal and concrete, Fernandez now works with a variety of materials including paint, wood, silicone and wallpaper, reflecting what she sees in the world around her in the UK. She enjoys solving formal problems in her dynamic images through colour and composition. She may take an arresting image from the media, enmeshing it into new contexts and reworking the image to invent different narratives that evoke the epic within the everyday - for instance, in the context of sporting activities, which bring out strong emotions in people.
Her figures undergo strange transformations, at times reminiscent of mythical creatures that are half man, half beast, at times like angels with wings and haloes. There is an iconic quality about certain figures, suggesting echoes of cultural signs that may be part of her Latin American Catholic background. Fernandez channels her dinstinctive creative energy into an exploration of the powerfully vital passions and incidents in people's daily lives.
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Leo Asemota
Motion Pictures
The premiere screening of Cult: Making of The Cure
6 to 8 March 2003 |
 Stills from Palindrome r.s.s.r.
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 Stills from Spoonman |
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 Stills from Palindrome r.s.s.r. |
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A special screening of the new production by Leo Asemota, and the opportunity to experience "Palindrome r.s.s.r.", Asemota's provocative and admired 2001 short film examining the issues of race, sex and religion. Other films by Asemota were also shown.
Asemota's new film Cult: Making of The Cure presented the process of creating the photographic work The Cure. The still image was simultaneously exhibited in the window of Zwemmer's Bookshop, Charing Cross Road, 6 to 16 March 2003.
Not was this the first showing of Cult, but also the first appearance of Asemota himself on screen as subject. Cult plays with 'many valued logic', the bizarre process whereby an allusion is taken as fact, presented as truth, extended and theorised, but the basis is false.
Leo Asemota trained in film and photography at the London College of Printing and emerged to receive the Artsadmin Artist Bursary in 1999 and the London Arts Bursary in 2001. His earlier films have toured London, South Africa and the United States, with screenings at the ICA, The Lux and the Curzon Cinema Soho. Asemota's photographic work was part of the group show Local Heroes - London & New York at The National Portrait Gallery in 2003.
Asemota is gaining recognition on the London art scene for his provocative exploration of perception and his technical virtuosity in filmmaking. "Palindrome r.s.s.r." brings his disciplined intensity to bear on four short films examining the issues of race, sin, sex and religion
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Jaimini Patel
Sugar and Spice
17 January to 3 March 2003
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In this exhibition, sensuous and beautifully crafted buildings made with sugars and spices seduced the viewer into a contemplation of pleasant culinary delights, only to shock them with the truth about how they came to be enjoyed as everyday goods in this country.
"Sugar and spice deal with Britain’s colonial trade. The scramble for things like cocoa, sugar and other spices across the world are inextricably linked ... These commodities that came out of the West Indies, Americas and India changed the history and destiny of many individuals forever." (Jaimini Patel, 2002)
Patel, an artist with a British Asian background, became interested in buildings in Britain that were built from the profits of the slave trade. ‘Architecture reveals stories about societies of the past, but my research found that what is not beautiful in these histories has been written out.’ The Bluecoat building in Liverpool was originally a school that 'apprenticed' boys to captains of slavers; the Georgian House in Bristol was built from Caribbean sugar plantation profits. Buildings such as these can be found all around the world from bustling cities such as Mumbai to remote Caribbean islands. They stand resolute as a reminder of a past that continues to underpin our lives.
Jaimini Patel has exhibited extensively in the UK, with work shown 2003 in a touring exhibition inaugurated at the British Council Gallery in New Delhi, India and an exhibition at the Stroud House Gallery in Gloucestershire.
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Barbara Walker
Private Face
30 October 2002 to 4 January 2003
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Focusing on the African-Caribbean community of Birmingham, where she lives, Barbara Walker produces expressive paintings depicting the social interactions that take place where people meet, such as in a church, a dance hall or a barber’s shop. These are the places ‘where the rituals and ceremonies of everyday life occur.’ The paintings present these daily activities with an eye for detail, making the viewer feel as though they are almost in the scene, particularly in her large-scale paintings. Walker aims to broaden people’s perceptions about aspects of her culture by presenting images of scenes that are not often seen within the mainstream media.
Considering her work to be ‘social documentary through painting’, Walker wishes to ‘challenge the stereotyping and misunderstanding [of the African-Caribbean community] that abounds, and offer a sophisticated and positive alternative in a mainstream setting'. As well as capturing men and women in their natural states as they go about their daily business, she feels it is important to document elderly people, ‘a group of people who are often invisible in today’s society and who hold unique memories for the community because of their status as the first generation of people from the Caribbean to come to Britain.’
Barbara Walker has shown her work extensively in the UK, with exhibitions this year at the mac in Birmingham and the Art Exchange Gallery in Nottingham.
"... ordinary people, living ordinary lives, going about their day to day business - and being painted by an extraordinary artist. ... In years to come, as much as the present time, we will thank Walker for these paintings." (Eddie Chambers, from Private Face, March 2002). |
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