Cheryl Lane: The Retrospective
7th June -10th July 2010
A Voice to Break Through the Silence
“When I be makin things, I be makin my self.
I use all those l’le things I see around me.
Things that got no meanin, things peoples don respect.
I jest put ‘em together, I don use my mind I jest sense ‘em”
Cheryl Lane’s work revolves around an urgent need for expression. Lane describes the importance of stories told in her family of everyday life that were lessons in the politics of life in America for a person of colour. The language used in the home was different to that used in public. ‘Home speakin’ was based on the Southern American Language AAVE (African American Vernacular English) a Creole or hybrid language consisting of West African languages and southern English. Lane describes this form of Black English to be loud boisterous, boastful and heartfelt and relies on attitude to get a point across. It is also dark and mournful and important to the perception and creation of her world. I would also add this language is coloured with myth and folklore, religious and spiritual belief.
In his book the Blues People, Leroi Jones (Amiri Baraka) describes a time when the African slave becomes and African American. He claims that it was only when the African slave realized that he was not returning to Africa, did he/she begin to learn the masters language and quickly adapt that language to create a new form appropriate to their new world experience thus creating a new language and new forms of creative expression.
“How I speak gives insight into how I create.”
Growing up at a time of immense change in American society for people of colour and for women must have had a profound impact on the young Lane as culture and politics are also central themes in the work in particular the politics of identity. Her political expression seems to reflect the Womanist ideals of Alice Walker who adopted the phrase the Personal is Political as a means to describe her practice of writing. Walkers need to give voice to women through her prose is something I also see in Lane’s works. I say women because although Lane is from and African American background and this is apparent in her work, she does not see this need for expression as being exclusive. Lane like Walker is very much aware that her identity is one of hybrid cultures so to adhere to one historic cultural reference point to Lane seems contrived as she identifies with many often contradictory ideas, represented as a fusion of cultures colliding in one individual.
The myth of Philomela from Ovid’s Metamorphoses has become the central allegory in much of Lane’s work. Philomela was raped by her brother-in-law; King Terus. When Philomela declares she will tell every one of his misdeeds the king brutally punishes her by cutting out her tongue and imprisoning her in a tower, rendering her void and speechless. Her silence creates a need for new language. The new language becomes her art, she stitches tapestry’s depicting the story of her misfortune. Critically Lane connects this to Julia Kristeva’s theory from The Revolution of Poetic Language, where Kristeva sought to demonstrate the function of the physical development of language, the acquisition of language becoming synonymous with subjectivity. The “self” established in language. The participation in the social is the ability to follow ‘regulations’ that are inherent in language, however language is unstable, it cannot fully suppress unconscious drives that exist in the make up of the subject therefore the unconscious affects language through the process of seepage.
You can sense this seepage in viewing Lane’s work. Images, merge with text. Use of materials to create layers of meaning materials from the domestic environment, unconventional materials, often found and reused materials merged together to make some strange and wonderful constructions. There is a constant repetition of letters words or phrases, or the name Philomela, Philomela, Philomela. Utterances, urges to speak to find a voice within the silence to find a means of expression. Magazine images are embellished and redefined by Lane’s mark making. Women are painted or drawn without mouths or eyes or they are constructed without heads or arms, essential physical qualities for intimate human expression. Lane’s work is has an intense draw to the viewer who is intrigued by a sense of beauty that is dark and melancholic yet romantic, sensual, and extremely poignant.
Cheryl Rich was born in Germaintown, Philadelphia USA on the 1st Oct 1949. She lived in New York City from 83-90 and then London from 1990. Cheryl’s creative expression began with fashion. She worked in fashion retail in all three cities including Comme Des Garcons in NY and Donna Karan in London and also creating her own collections that she sold in Portobello Market. Moving on from Fashion to finding a more personal means of expression, Cheryl completed a BA Fine Art degree at the University of East London in 2002 and her MA at City and Guilds, London in 2006, receiving an award from the arts and humanities research council to study and a distinction in her written thesis for the MA. Cheryl Lane sadly passed away on 11th January 2010. Her work is in private collections in the USA, UK and Greece.
Barby Asante, Associate Curator 198 Contemporary Arts and Learning
Future Essense Danielle Dean 198@45
14th June -28th June 2010
In Future Essence, 2009 (originally a commission for the Window Gallery at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, London), Dean proposes a possible re-branding of pure, natural coconut oil - a basic foodstuff and traditional afro-beauty product:
Future Essence Pure Coconut Oil has landed from outer space, from a far-off planet: an extraordinary substance of the future. With its remarkable nutrient-rich, soothing properties the possible uses of this versatile product range from beauty and hair care, to healing and general wellbeing.
The face of Future Essence Pure Coconut Oil is the alluring model Donyale Luna, notably the first black American to appear on the cover of British Vogue who starred in films by Andy Warhol (including Donyale Luna, 1967, in which she appeared as Snow White). Luna was known to dismiss the idea of racial difference and once said that she was from Mars.
Why not sample Future Essence Pure Coconut Oil and star in your own science fiction where the future is yours..?!
By borrowing from ‘futuristic’ science fiction the artist attempts to explore contemporary ideas of race, social difference and the mass media. This investigation continues in Artist Run Space on a Newly Discovered Planet, which began as a project with auto-italia south east for No Soul For Sale, a festival of independent arts organisations at Tate Modern in May this year.
A book of annotated illustrations guides the reader through the fictional setting of an artist run space on an imaginary ‘water planet’, that provides a place for artists visiting from Earth to make and exhibit their work. This marks the beginning of a larger project where other artists will be invited to propose hypothetical artwork, exhibitions or projects for this fictitious place.
Danielle Dean was born in Alabama in 1982. She lives and works in London and Los Angeles.
Panopticon: Surveillance Explored
21st April – 21st May 2010
Launch 21st April-18.30-21.30
'I See' Alexandra Valy, 2008
Panopticon: Surveillance Explored is an exhibition exploring the idea of the duality of surveillance, delving into the sinister and playful elements of surveillance in contemporary society. Panopticon asks questions not only of society’s watchful eye, but you too. Living in the data age, our movements are constantly monitored from birth to death. This exhibition aims to offer an opportunity for the public to explore the love and hate relationship we have with watching people and being watched.
This exhibition brings together the work of emerging artists, who through the pieces presented, consider what it is to watch and be watched. Alexandra Valy has created an installation piece called ‘I see(v.2)’ is a comment on the inherent uncertainty of life, one where we experience our daily lives being recorded. Jayne O’Hanlon will create an installation piece focusing on the interplay between the viewer and the viewed and Jenny Barrett, Kate Williamson and Aditya Palsule are creating a photographic document of the presence of surveillance in our society.
The London Borough of Lambeth is known for its high crime rates and is unsparingly covered with CCTV cameras on every street corner, making it a key location, to peel back the layers of surveillance. Brixton is also home to the majority of CCTV in Lambeth, thus making 198 Contemporary Arts & Learning the perfect forum to raise such a debate.
198 Contemporary Arts & Learning and University Of Arts London have collaborated with students from Central Saint Martins BA (Hons) Criticism, Communication and Curation on an exhibition focusing on the nature and presence of surveillance. Through visual and conceptual artworks, the exhibition intends to link the various aspects of surveillance in the UK to the
Brixton area – one of the most closely watched towns in London.
Panopticon: Surveillance Explored has been curated by: Jiyen Chae, Jai Clarke-Binns, France Ewen and Stacey Matthews.
http://www.alexandravaly.com/
http://panopticonat198.wordpress.com/
Be-Longing: Travellers Stories, Traveller’s Lives.
An Exhibition of Photographs by Eva Sajovic
Exhibition 4th February – 20th March 2010
2009 witnessed a pogrom against the Roma community in Northern Ireland, and the rise of parties in European elections campaigning on anti-Roma manifestos. Traveller communities are the largest ethnic minority group in Europe numbering over 12 million people. For centuries travellers have suffered extreme levels of prejudice and rejection and for some it has been necessary to hide their identity to survive. Eva Sajovic’s exhibition Be – Longing, photographs of people from Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities a small part of the necessary reaction.
Eva’s intimate photographs of traveller communities from the UK and Slovenia are mesmerising. Her sensitive portraits of individuals and family groups, in their home environments and in life affirming situations, show the current situations and concerns of her subjects. She displays her images accompanied by written accounts or recorded testimonies which give her subjects a voice, giving the viewer a feeling of their presence. You get an idea of what life is like for these people, the importance of family, their relationships and connections to one another, their strong sense of pride and feelings of loyalty to their community and cultural identity, also the very real experience of suffering prejudice and being consider outsiders in the countries they live in. Eva connects with her subjects and collaborates with them to create images that are honest. She respects and values the relationship she has with her subjects and through this acceptance we experience the very intimate relationship Eva has with them.
Eva has been working with traveller communities for the last two years her most recent project being Pavee Widen (Travellers Talking) a book of photographs and texts made in collaboration with Roma, Irish Travellers and English Gypsies in the London Borough of Southwark and STAG (Southwark Travellers Action Group). With Be-Longing Eva hopes to promote an understanding of traveler communities and counter the unspoken prejudices about such people. She takes her experiences working with these communities further by not only presenting her work but also by inviting dialogue and debate through making public some of the conversations she has been having with the people she has photographed and the people who have supported her research, through workshops, screenings and seminars during the presentation of her work at 198.
Eva Sajovic is a Slovenian photographer who lives and works in London. In 2007 she won a merit in the Slovenian Ethnographic Museum’s Photographic Awards, and a D&AD award for photography; and has exhibited her work extensively, both in the UK and abroad.
Jo Self
ILL=USION
Paintings from a Poisoned Garden
5th November – 23rd January 2010
Jo Self whose visionary flower paintings reveal entire universes in the fleshy convolutions of stamen and petal, has embarked on a radical new direction. Her new exhibition is nothing less than an intense compression of her life and work into the smallest museum London has ever seen, and an accompanying book. From her childhood as the daughter of one of ITN's first news cameramen, to her time painting the Dalai Lama's garden, Self's take on an extraordinary and creative life produces an artwork that is as diverting as it is original. Will Self
Jo Self’s new exhibition, ILL=USION is the sequel to her last show at the Redfern Gallery, London in 2006, 'Paintings from the Private Garden of His Holiness the Dalai Lama’ . The exhibition will include the largest and most vibrant oil paintings from His Holinesses garden including PINK TIBETAN LOTUS, ORCHID from her residency at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew and more recent paintings created in her garden in Herne Hill PAINTINGS FROM A POISONED GARDEN, which has become the focus of an environmental campaign. Some of the paintings in this exhibition are of the night sky and the moon around Brixton and Herne Hill, something that has been an influence on her work and life since her father showed her images of the sky and the moon through his telescope. A limited edition loose-leaf book accompanies the exhibition of poetry written on Self’s mobile phone while working in the garden of the Dalai Lama. These simply formed and beautiful poems work within the limits of the amount of words one is able to send in a single text message, and tell the story of Self’s life as an artist, her thoughts on illusion, and her concerns about the environment. The poems draw a path from the Dalai Lama’s garden back to her childhood watching the TV news that her father was filming, the inspiration of space travel and the poisoned garden her new paintings inhabit. The book is the exhibition in a smaller more delicate form.
198 Contemporary Arts and Learning is delighted to present this exhibition by a pre-eminent local artist and long time friend of 198. Self has lived in the area for over 28 years and her choice to show her work locally shows her affection for her local area, our shared commitment to giving local audiences an experience of high quality contemporary art and a strong ethos of participation and community.
Jo Self’s limited edition hand made book ILLUSION will be available to buy from the gallery during the exhibition each individually made book is a miniature exhibition. Books cost £50 each
Suki Chan
14th September – 19th October 2009
www.freetoair.org.uk
Chan's work weaves together a series of evocative video portraits highlighting people’s different responses to the hubbub of London life. Groups of skaters, unimpeded by traffic, move freely through the twilight city, tracing their own intuitive map of the metropolis. Nigerian security guards gatekeeping a deserted high-rise office block compare the ‘freedom’ of London with their rhythms and aspirations of their former life. While city commuters embody the mundane, monotonous regularity of our everyday urban existence.
Events
A series of events accompanying Suki Chan’s exhibition were held at 198 Contemporary Arts & Learning, with contributions from Free to Air development artists Eileen Perrier and Grace Schwindt.
Deepa Moodgal
An introduction to Meditation
Wednesday 23 September, 7–9pm
"Meditation is a continuous flow of perception or thought like flow of water in a river." — Hatha Yoga Pradapika.
Picking up from Suki Chan’s studies of meditation in Sleep Walk, Sleep Talk, this event presents an introduction to the practice by Deepa Moodgal, the founder of Lambeth-based organisation DeepaSpirit which promotes meditation as a significant part of yoga practice and everyday grounding. Please bring a cushion or a blanket to sit on.
www.deepaspirit.com
Eileen Perrier
Send and Receive
(An Open Dialogue)
Saturday 26 September, 12–4pm
Based upon her latest artistic research, Eileen Perrier invites you to join an open dialogue event to share experiences of sending and receiving goods between countries of origin and countries of residence. Whether you are a sender, a receiver or a second-generation observer, Eileen is interested in hearing your recollections of these personal exchanges of correspondence and possessions. Please note that this event will be filmed and will form part of the research and development towards Eileen Perrier’s project.
www.eileenperrier.com
Grace Schwindt
Only a Free Individual can Create a Free Society
(Open Dialogue/Performance)
Thursday 1 October, 6.30–9pm
Revisiting discussions she witnessed as a child surrounded by radical leftwing adults, Schwindt is interested in exploring freedom as a philosophical notion. The questions 'is it possible to live a truly free life' and 'who has the right to claim it' will be discussed in a collaborative performance with artist Klaas Hoek and will include screenings of Schwindt's work in progress.
www.graceschwindt.net
Free to Air is a Film and Video Umbrella project for more information on FVU projects visit www.fvu.co.uk
What Is crime?
6th July – 21st August 2009
An exhibition of Photography that asks the question ‘What is crime?’
‘Too often the media focuses on the harms and crimes of those who have relatively little power in society. This exhibition will broaden our view of who is affected by the financial crisis, environmental harms and different forms of violence.' Ken Loach
Violent events caused by businesses and the state; hidden violence against women, children and the elderly; the way in which poverty hurts, injures, and kills; the impact of environmental pollution, the images in this exhibition reflect concerns that rarely attract the same level of political and public concern as `conventional' crime.
Organised by the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies in collaboration with 198, and supported by The Wates Foundation and The Independent, this exhibition presents entries to the What is crime? competition. Rather than conventional law and order images of police, prison and judges, What Is crime? invited entries which challenged conventional thinking about harm, injustice and crime. Divided into three categories, violence, finance and environment the competition inspired school children, professional photographers and other members of the public, both in the UK and internationally, to interpret the competition themes. The judging panel was made up of individuals able to bring a range of expertise from the world of arts and academia, including photographers, criminologists and curators such as award winning film maker Ken Loach, Mark Haworth-Booth, Tom Hunter and Tamsin O Hanlon.
The What is crime? exhibition is part of a broader project by the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, that has produced original research from leading academics on questions as broad as ‘safety crimes’ in the workplace, the impact of environmental regulation on human health and also the effect of the current recession on homicide, suicide and heart attack rates across Europe. The winning entries include images depicting the construction of Israel/Palestinian wall, a polluted river in India, children working in an illegal tannery, images of environmental damage, and the painful suffering of the elderly.
Images Mays Legs, Davy Jones, Sea at Foxhall, Catherine Lindsey Davies, In Need of Refreshment, Anna Chrystal Stephens, Dark Waters, Alex Masi, The Palestinian Wall, Reyaz Limalia.
Roma Tearne
A Moment in Time That Mattered to Someone
14th May – 20th June 2009
“I once found a photograph on a seat in the underground. It was black-and-white and creased as if it had been kept in a wallet for years. Later I noticed someone had drawn all over it. This set me thinking about the ways in which the photographic image can be altered. A photograph is taken with a view of eternity in mind. Otherwise why take it? It is meant as an aid to memory, for memory as we know, fails. Its loss is something we all fear and the photograph stands between that loss and our fear.”
The paintings in the series 'A Moment In Time’ evoke anxiety. In one of them a boy is in flight; he crosses a desert coloured by panic. In another, giant trees are submerged by the sea or dominate a hillside. Collages from this same series are the detritus of letter writing. In these, anxiety is represented by images of dogs or monkeys. Yellowed endpapers, the fragmentary marks of handwriting, stamps and postmarks are all signs of absence. A line of glass jars in another room display photographic images half-submerged in water. The distortion created by the refraction of the water, which becomes further deformed as the viewer moves past, gives the appearance of disturbed memories. Roma Tearne’s new body of work explores the erasure of memory that occurred in her personal life and this also provides the material for both her novel Brixton Beach and her visual work.
Tearne is a Sri Lankan-born artist and writer living and working in Britain. She came her with her parents at the age of ten. Training as a painter, she completed her MA at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford. For nearly twenty-five years her work as painter, installation artist, and filmmaker has dealt with the traces of history and memory within public and private spaces. Roma is currently a Creative Writing Fellow at Brookes University, Oxford. This exhibition marks her return to 198 and coincides with the publication of her third novel, Brixton Beach. Signed copies of the book (published in June by Harper Collins), will be available at the gallery from 29th May 2009.
Listen to Roma Tearne on BBC Radio 4 Womans Hour 28th May 2009
[re]locate
A Sonic Installation by Tahera Aziz
30th April – 2nd May 2009
‘never to take the tedious task
of waiting for a bus for granted.’
(What Stephen Lawrence Has Taught Us by Benjamin Zephaniah)
[re]locate is a sonic installation revisiting an ordinarily public ‘place’ that retains the traces of a deeply significant event; it is concerned with the processes involved in struggling to preserve the memory of that event whilst offering new insights. The impetus for the work flows from the tragic events surrounding the racially motivated murder of 18-year-old Stephen Lawrence near a bus stop in south London in 1993, and the deep impact this has had publicly particularly following the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry into the police handling of the murder investigation, and its subsequent lack of resolution.
Taking the notion of the daily routine of waiting at the bus stop as its starting point, [re]locate explores the disruption of the everyday, to foreground the event once again, highlighting detailed elements that have particular resonance. On entering the space the audience members assume the role of ‘pedestrians’ or ‘passers-by’, guiding the unfolding of the sonic events. Depending on their movements within the installation, they unravel the multi-layered elements, recounted from different perspectives or time frames of significance to the case. Essentially, the audience rediscover fragments that bear witness to the event that has long since past, but still demands closure.
Tahera Aziz has had a longstanding creative and political interest in identity, migration and racism. She has produced photo-based and installation work that explores how wider socio-political issues or events can impact on the individual to shape their experiences, and their sense of self and belonging. Motivated by a desire to explore the potential of sound to re-examine events associated with the Stephen Lawrence case, Aziz has developed [re]locate with funding from the Arts Council of England and the Arts and Humanities Research Council, in partnership with London South Bank University and PVA MediaLab. The preview celebrates the creative outcomes of the research and marks a transition of the work into a form for public viewing and response. [re]locate will continue to evolve in each of its new locations and spaces, with audience responses being integral to the process.
Aya Haidar
Crewel Stories
6th March – 18th April 2009
During the 2006 bombing of Lebanon a friend of artist Aya Haidar sent her daily diary entries, recounting the horror and devastation happening around her, she shared her views, feelings, her fears and her desire to go home. Aya took one of these diary entries and carefully embroidered it onto a pillow in black thread, adding her own thoughts and feelings over the top in red.
On first viewing of Aya Haidar’s work, you are struck by the beauty of the meticulously crafted handmade objects you are being presented with. On closer inspection you realise that underneath the beauty lies stories of loss, displacement and migration, stories of day-to-day life and suffering. These stories are personal and intimate, exploring her identity as a woman of Lebanese origin, her family ties and the understanding of sitting between two cultures.
Using recycled materials, fabric, paper, fibre and making these discarded materials useful again, Aya reworks these materials, adding layers of meaning to the new objects she makes. This also explores the idea of necessity versus commodity and when people are put into a position of having to move, what is it that you take and what is it that you leave behind. Growing up Aya recalls knitting with her grandmother as she recounted stories of her life in Lebanon, reminding you of the intergenerational narrative within the work, the passing of the skill and memory from one generation to another. These new hand made objects provide comfort and connection with the past through the reuse of material and the recollection of the stories embroidered on them, making that which might have been passed on aurally into something physical.
Aya Haidar graduated from Slade School of Art in 2008. She has exhibited her work in the UK and abroad and has work in the Ryerson and Joan Flasch artist’s book collection at the School of Art Institute of Chicago. She lives and works in London and is currently doing an MSc in Non Government Organisations and Development at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
People, Signs and Resistance
12 December – 21 February 2009
Inspired by unique film shot between the 1960's and 1980's by Clovis Salmon, People, Signs and Resistance presents his unseen films alongside commissioned works by artists Nada Prlja, George Amposah, Tim Blake and George Butler in a multi-faceted exhibition that engages people in the recent heritage of Brixton.
Known locally as "Sam The Wheels" due to the cycle repair service he operates from his home in Railton Road the "Front Line" of Brixton, Salmon arrived in London from Jamaica in 1954. As an amateur filmmaker he began filming church services and local street scenes, including the aftermath of the 1981 Brixton Riots. He also produced a film that follows the story of 'Jesus Saves', a Pentecostal Church demolished to make way for the infamous ‘Barrier Block’ on Coldharbour Lane.
Salmon’s film footage is shown alongside the work of artists and local participants developed throughout 2008. Filmmaker George Amposah worked with young people to create a series of films that investigate the SUS laws, knife crime, the Windrush generation and Enoch Powell’s Rivers of Blood speech.
George Butler has produced an interactive video, which develops questions around the themes of ideology, identity and belonging. Filmed interviews with Anarchists, Activists, Rastafarians and Black Panthers all connected in some way with Railton Road have been compiled into a non-linear narrative using Korsakow Software, creating a different experience for every viewer.
Nada Prlja’s project “Jesus Dies for our Sins” explores the recent redevelopment of religious spaces in Brixton and tracks down their alternative use. Prlja's installation displayed in the gallery front window is a direct message that is intended to act as a warning to gallery visitors, as well as everyday passers-by, about the careless redefinition and redevelopment of Brixton. Tim Blake’s film and photographic work, explores the influences of different cultures on the idea of British-ness as Britain has changed from an imperialist project to a multicultural one.
In essence the exhibition provides a document of the unique spirit and contribution of Brixton to the British landscape.
For more information about this project visit www.samthewheels.co.uk
