SPACE

Sept / Oct Exhibition programme preview at SPACE, Thursday September 3rd, 2009, featuring two new exhibitions + Dean Baldwin’s Mini Bar + The Library: a unique collaboration between SPACE and Kris Latocha.

TOM ELLIS
Get me a show in China
4th September - 17th October 2009

Q Talk to me about heresy. Is a heretic dispos...ition – as embodied in your own work and that of those who you respect – more enchanting to you than a revolutionary one?

A Yes! Yes! Yes!

Tom Ellis is an artist living in London. He makes paintings and sculptures. He is represented by MOT.

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RICHARD JOHN JONES

PROH-SOH' PA-PEER
4th September - 17th October 2009

Part II of an exhibition by Richard John Jones

Launching the NEU! young artist exhibition platform and following on from a performance and live film shoot held at Auto Italia South East in early August, Richard John Jones presents the second instalment of his project PROH-SOH' PA-PEER.

PROH-SOH’ PA-PEER* is a sustained exploration of the representational logic of the mainstream media – in particular, the role the media has in shaping the ideological predicates of contemporary political, activist and libidinal (in particular queer) subject positions.

* The exhibition’s title is a phonetic play on the word ‘prosopopoeia’: a rhetorical device in which a speaker or writer communicates to an audience by speaking as another person or object.

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DEAN BALDWIN
Mini-Bar
4th September - 2nd October 2009

Fresh from representing Canada at the Venice Biennale, SPACE resident Dean Baldwin will be setting up his MiniBar in the gallery courtyard - a fully functioning scale dive bar with booze, music, et al.

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CAMILLA LYON
4th September – 17th October 2009

Camilla Lyon inaugurates a new rotation of works presented in the gallery reception area with Rorschach (2009).

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The Library
Ongoing

Independent publications and periodicals from around the world presented for your reading pleasure. Curated by Kris Latocha (PAPERBACK magazine), The Library is a new permanent fixture at SPACE.

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A full series of events and screenings to be announced...
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PRIVATE VIEW: Friday 3rd April 6.30- 9pm

Belgrade based Art Activist group Škart present their first UK retrospective exhibition ‘On the Origin of Wishes’ documenting their extensive practice overthe past 20 years. Škart are known internationally for their socially engaged and collaborative artworks employing an eclecti...c range of media including graphic design, poetry, video, embroidery, book making and public projects.

From forming a punk band to an all male embroidery group, Škart use art as a vehicle for social activism and creative empowerment. Škart’s ‘New Embroideries Project’ in 2007 involved working with women and children living in Hackney to create textiles emblazoned with contemporary rhymes and images relating to the makers’ own experiences.

For the retrospective exhibition at SPACE they will again be collaborating with local people from East London, running a programme of live events and on-site collaborations within a designated ‘Action Space’ entitled ‘Poetry will be Written by All’.

Škart, which literally translates as ‘trash’ or ‘scraps’, officially consists of graphic collective Djordje Balmazovic and Dragan Protic and frequently involves co-workers depending on the project at hand. Škart’s form of art activism consistently challenges a consumer-led cultural model and the traditional privileged hierarchy of the artist.

Through a refusal to commodify and an appeal to the social consciousness of those attending their events, Škart continue to investigate the problematic relationships of ‘artist’, ‘consumer’, ‘performer’ and ‘observer’ seeking a position akin to ‘creative facilitator’ delivering creative empowerment and a social statement.

Škart’s activist practice is in part informed by the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia and Serbia’s recent tumultuous political history and resulting economic devastation. In the early 1990s the ‘Sadness Project’ involved the production and dissemination of recycled cardboard booklets of poems on the streets of Belgrade. Handed out to passers-by, they punctuated the looming hopelessness felt on the streets as Yugoslavia continued war torn and Belgrade residents suffered under lack of necessities.

This project’s ambition and materials are emblematic of Škart’s practice as a whole, which frequently employs a stripped down functional aesthetic, choosing the re-used and recycled to compliment their emphasis on creative social action.

The costs of excessive capitalism, a global recession and a tightening of the UK’s financial belt sets a timely context for an examination of Škart’s work and the presentation of possible alternatives of cultural production.Read More

SPACE is pleased to present a major new commission by Godfried Donkor. In 'Story of a London Township' a myriad of alternative shelters throughout indoor and outdoor exhibition areas explore our relationship with rudimentary forms of housing and their significance within the gallery context.

An icon of architecture, the... mud hut is symbolic of shelter and security and reflects communal living with its roots in ancient African culture. In SPACE’s courtyard, a large mud hut built with re-used coffee sacks and tonnes of sand is as sculpturally powerful as it is resonant in addressing histories of African and Imperial conflict.

Initiating a dialogue with the surrounding architecture, Donkor’s work exposes the tensions between differing forms of shelter and reveals our neglect in appreciating the relative security and privacy of modern forms of housing.

‘Story of a London Township’ will be accompanied by a series of events including discussions, dinners, and workshops for children and young adults.
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Exhibition open 8 November - 20 December

Through innovative engineering and robotics, 'Schematic' explores the role that technologically mediated relationships play in shaping our attitudes towards leisure, work, the environment and each other.

Local landscape, weather and the environment is addressed in the work of Pete...r Flemming and Germaine Koh. Koh’s 'Fair-weather forces' (water level) (2008) uses velvet ropes on stainless steel stanchions which move up and down electronically via a sensor in relation to the water level of a nearby body of water.

Flemming’s Canoe (2003) contains a mechanized paddle apparatus. Powered by an electric motor and battery, the paddle propels itself through the entire length of the water filled interior of a mock canoe within the gallery space.

Playful, interactive works by Norman White, Nicholas Stedman and Joe McKay juxtapose the ‘handmade’ with modern technology. The show will include White’s seminal electronic 'Helpless Robot' (1987 - 2002), a freestanding robot that seeks interaction with spectators.

Schematic is curated by Canadian curators and producers Heather Corcoran, Michelle Kasprzak, Gillian McLver and Sarah Cook.

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Sep 12- Oct 26

In ‘MUMU: Malice and Misunderstanding’ the belief structures surrounding art are manipulated through plagiarism and prankster behaviour. The exhibition highlights the loss of modernist ideals by adopting the identities of different artists; using and subverting
famous artworks to reveal the dogma that surr...ounds them.
Modernism has lost its reliability.
On a large black plastic sheet held together with tape, Raat constructs an anti-neonist pamphlet, its text lifted from an anti-neoist internet site. Large monolithic ‘T’ shaped sound sculptures play KLF music backwards. Artists Rauschenberg, De Kooning and Barnet Newman are involved in dialogues regarding their work and Mondrian paintings are twisted and forced into awkward shapes. 101 black and white plastic paintings have been lifted from a neoist internet site and reconstructed in the gallery
space.
Neoism is a subculture actively engaged in avoiding cultural
categorisation, Raat reproduces typically neoist subject matter however he also mimics the movements form and sense of humour.
Neoism functions by means of shared pseudonyms & identities, and a wide propagation of ‘fakes’, pranks, paradoxes and outright plagiarism,challenging the cult of the image. Post modernist art, even when constructed by Raat using a modernist approach, becomes a parady
of itself.
It becomes fraudulence.Thomas Raat was born in Leiderdorp in the Netherlands in 1979 where
he is currently working. He studied at the Koninklijke Academie 1997-2001 and Norwich School of Art and Design in 2000.
In 2005-2006 he was accepted for a Delfina studio in London and in 2007 exhibited the solo show ‘The Horse Cure’ at Alexandre Pollazon Ltd London.
He is represented in Amsterdam by the gallery De Expeditie.
Thomas Raat is in residency at SPACE throughout July and August 2008 as part of a new initiative supporting International Contemporary Artists.
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