EASTinternational

Norwich University College of the Arts

 

Adam Burton is a printer and poster-maker gently exploring his generation’s doubts and uncertainties about issues including socialism, global population growth, environmentalism and how to live responsibly today. For EAST09 Adam will be showing a series of rubber-stamped text works titled Acceptable Answers, a quote taken from Garrett Hardin, a leading and controversial ecologist. The works are printed on grey-board which is a waste material used as packing for paper on pallets. The texts describe potential apocalyptic future events raising questions and awareness about how what we do now affects what is to come. Alongside these he will be showing posters created using large wooden letterpress type: including WORK WORKING WORKERS, DREAM OF SOCIALISM and THE POWER TO IGNORE.

Adam has recently completed an MA at Bath where he visits and self-produces a magazine called Don’t Bother.

 

Agnieszka Kurant will be presenting Snow Black, an exhibition of invisible art by other artists. Potentially on view 24 hours a day in the windows of the gallery, the works will be written with UV sensitive and photochromic inks, some visible only at night under UV light, and others only visible in sunlight. Some of the works don’t exist yet or have ceased to exist, one is a computer virus and others include a dream, a smell, a mental image, etc. They include a painting by Roman Opalka that hasn’t been painted yet but has been sold, an invisible sculpture by Maurizio Cattelan, a feature-length movie that was shot with no film in the camera (a work by Jay Cheung) and a secret by Bob Barry that he asked his students to create which we don’t know if it still exists. Some works were commissioned especially for the show, others were borrowed and some were “stolen”.

Agnieszka will also be displaying Future Anterior, a copy of The New York Times from the year 2020. A professional clairvoyant was asked to forecast what will happen in and around the year 2020 and New York Times journalists and ghost-writers wrote articles based on the clairvoyant’s predictions. The work is printed with heat sensitive ink that will only become visible above a certain temperature.

Agnieszka lives and works in Warsaw, she was invited to present a project at Frieze Art Fair 2008 and regularly exhibits internationally.

 

Andrea Büttner will be showing Little Works. This was produced in collaboration with a group of closed order Carmelite Nuns in Notting Hill. The artist gave them a video camera and asked them to record their craft-works (drawing, painting, tapestry, etc), which they call ‘little works’. Other work by Andrea not shown at EAST draws attention to the physicality of the artist through the use of devices such as brown paint covering a wall as high as the artist can reach, clay pushed into the edge of a room as a physical force and memory of the artist, and woodcut prints which clearly show the artist’s mark-making and activity.

Andrea lives and works in Frankfurt and London.

 

Andrew Cranston’s paintings are sometimes painted on the covers of hardback books. The paintings are related to images in the narratives of classic paperback books defined by the paintings chosen for their covers. Cranston explores his interest in the relationship between stories and imagery. His first encounter with Edvard Munch was on the cover of a Henrik Ibsen book and with Caspar David Friedrich it was on the cover of a book by Nietsche. The use of fiction as a starting point for a painting exposes the potential for fiction to be not necessarily real, but possibly true, and the parallels this suggests between fiction and painting.

Andrew has a solo show at the International Project Space in Birmingham in April and teaches at The Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen. He showed in EAST07.

 

Angela Bartram explores the idea of closeness between individuals (the audience, humans, non-humans). She uses the mouth as a site of closeness on the human body as well as an area or orifice of vulnerability. Angela will be presenting video documentation of an activity in which she is seen in profile performing an extremely intimate physical exchange through tongue-to-tongue connection with a series of dogs including a German Shepherd and a Saint Bernard. The breeds of dogs she engages with are considered to be dangerous breeds and are all male and neutered.

Angela is based in Nottingham, has a Phd in Fine Art and teaches Fine Art at the University of Lincoln.

 

Anna Okrasko will create an installation consisting of 3018 graphite covered canvases that are 10 cm x 10cm and placed on the walls of a free-standing 7 metre long corridor that is approximately 80cm wide. The viewer is invited to walk around the structure or pass through the corridor entering with one view point and exiting with another. The experience is of walking between the walls with the danger of the loose graphite brushing onto their clothes marks those who have entered the corridor and those who have not. The work looks back to Nauman’s corridors of the early 1970s and is also a metaphor for East and West.

Anna lives and works Warsaw and is represented by Czarna Galeria. In autumn 2009 she will take up a residency at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam.

 

Barbara Walker exposes the personal, social and political implications of the police SUS Laws, stop and search policy. She focuses on the affect the SUS laws have had on young black males in Handsworth, Birmingham, including her own son. Barbara uses the paper dockets the detainee has a right to request, as a surface to record draw and painted images of her son and the streets where he was stopped. The docets record the reason for the search as: “Walking alone after dark”. She will also show over life size, drawn and painted portraits, from her long term interest in realism, that place her work in a dialogue with Eddie Chambers, Eugene Palmer and Hurvin Anderson.

Barbara lives and works in Birmingham and has recently completed a residency at The Bag Factory in Johannesburg.

 

Corin Sworn has been exploring issues connected to the legacy of Modernism through education and groups or communities within society. Looking at schools like Summerhill, where the students have the power to make decisions about the structure and rules within the school, and communities as various as Kitsault (a town built for a mining community that never appeared and became a ‘ghost-town’) and The World (an exclusive island holiday resort currently being constructed off the coast of Dubai) she investigates the flaws within utopias.

Originally from Vancouver, Corin currently lives and works in Glasgow. She is represented by Blanket Gallery Vancouver and her exhibition at Zieher Smith, New York was reviewed in Frieze earlier this year.

 

David Jacques’ project, Por Convencion Ferrer, records an imagined series of lectures held from 1910-1918 by a group of Anarcho-Syndycalists based in Liverpool. The lectures are suggested to be named in honour of the Spanish educationalist, Francisco Ferrer y Guardia, and were a platform for anyone to propose, for free and open discussion, any subject of their choosing. This construct is used by David as a tool to present his interests in social, political and artistic subject matter. The lectures are evidenced by a series of banners produced displayed as found artefacts. These represent a background, and interest in, Trade Union banners and the way art has been used as a tool for protest in mural, poster and other forms.

David studied with Desmond Rochfort and did research on Orozco in Mexico in the 1970s. He worked for 11 years at the Unemployed Workers Centre in Kirby. His work on Irish Immigration is at the Walker Art Gallery and he also made the banners for the News Bar in Liverpool. His book Por Convencion Ferrer was published by Liverpool University Press 2009.

 

Elizabeth McAlpine’s work FOUND TIME (Big Ben) is a collection of postcards of the clock at the Palace of Westminster. Elizabeth has attempted to find a postcard for every minute of the twenty-four hour time period, i.e. both an am and a pm cycle of the 12hour clock face of Big Ben. Other works by Elizabeth include a one-minute film made entirely of the whitest frame (the epicentre) taken from 1500 different cinematic explosions and feature length film, KISS KISS BANG BANG, composed of 198 movies running along the same timeline, however everything is removed from the film apart from the moment of impact, whether it is a kiss or a vehicular crash.

Elizabeth lives and works in London and showed April 09 with Laura Bartlett Gallery.

Ewa Exelrad has produced a series of large scale photographs of her friends. They are both minimalist and surreal, suggesting the future that shows them dislocated from the world, set in large, bank scenes and with a sheen and expression that questions their reality. The photographs question the reality of the self and the way in which we interact and connect with the world.

Originally from Poland, Ewa now lives and works in London.

 

Gernot Wieland makes films that examine the processes of psychiatry and psychology. The general methodology of scientific practice is one that he presents within ficticious tales of characters who somehow struggle to engage with the world in what we would see as a ‘normal’ way. He will be showing a new work made while on a residency in Rome that uses the structure of Passolini’s Theroama as a starting point. Birds are a common theme and motif in Gernot’s work and their presence is metaphorically suggested in this work by the presence of humans flocking around the factory owner at the start.

Gernot was born in Austria and now lives and works in Berlin. He is represented by Galerie Andreas Huber, Vienna.

 

Grace Schwindt uses film as a vehicle to show her relationship with the world through family history, German history and storytelling. Simple drawings or objects together with recorded narratives examine the memories of her grand parents of before, during and after the Second World War. All is not as it appears as Schwindt is also questioning the accounts passed on and embellished over a 70 year period. For EAST09 Grace will be producing a new film examining in historical records her grandparent’s story of their tenant, a Communist woman whose husband returned to St Petersburg with Lenin.

Grace was born in Karlsruhe and now lives and works in Dalston, London.

 

Hiromi Kawasaki has produced a musical score of constellations along with an instrument to play it. The score consists of a length of paper with holes marking the positions of stars, which passes through a music box, functioning in a similar way to an old piano-player. Hiromi also explores the surface and potential of photography by introducing material such as flour to large scale photographs of stars laid on the floor blurring the physical reality of the material with the imagery of the sky and stars.

Born in Osaka, Japan. Hiromi studied at the Slade and after a period in Japan she is currently living and working in London.

 

James Hopkins makes sculpture that employs visual illusion and trompe l’oeil. His eight foot stretched electric guitars can be seen as normal when viewed from an oblique angle (similar to the stretched skull in Hobein’s The Ambassadors) but when viewed straight on it has a visual onomatopoeia that represents the sound an electric guitar has the potential to make. His set of defunct chairs, some of which have been slightly altered, can be read to spell LOVE, creating a love-seat.

James lives and works in London he has shown internationally and is represented by Max Wigram Gallery.

 

John Russell has been researching the possibilities of visualising philosophical propositions, such as the Nietzschian ideas of affirmation, utopia and the apocalypse. After discussion and exploration with online scientific communities he uses 3-D modelling techniques and found images to create complex large-scale digital scenes that express what it looks like and feels like to live now. He accesses on-line communities, which he uses as a resource, or surrogate brain, to learn the skills to achieve his vision.

John Russell lives and works in Reading where he is Reader in Fine Art at the University. He was part of the radical art group BANK who showed in EAST 1999. Geniess 2005 was commissioned by the Norwich Gallery and toured to Transmission. He recently exhibited at Matt’s Gallery.

 

Julie Masterton creates situationist interventions that employ stage set-like installations of simple materials creating, minimal, constructivist scenes. The element of performance is added to these scenes when performers dressed in elegant and simple costumes, or uniforms, engage in a series of prescribed actions that combine with the simple elements to create a tableau that can be seen to unify objects, performers and costumes into one symbiotic relationship. Once the performance is over the participants leave and the set returns to stasis. A performance of Julie’s work will take place on the opening night of the exhibition.

Born in Australia, Julie now lives and works in London.

 

Kate Corder spent a year documenting the life of an organic market garden. Every month she visited the garden and methodically filmed the fields, greenhouse and plants at their various stages. At EAST she will be presenting this documentation in 4 seasons that will be displayed throughout the exhibition. She is also working with Norwich City Council, Norwich University College of the Arts, Norwich City College, and the Friends of Norwich in Bloom to arrange vegetables displays instead of flowers at sites throughout the city. The displays will be at Norwich City Hall, Hay Hill, The Assembly House, and a main focus will be on Saint George’s Street at Norwich University College of the Arts.

Kate lives and works in Reading.

 

Laure Prouvost will be showing a subtitled film that presents itself as a test, stating at the beginning “FULL CONCENTRATON IS NOW REQUESTED QUESTIONS WILL BE ASKED AT THE END”. The film then shows a series of images, subtitles and spoken word that connect in ways that confuse the viewer, verging on the edge of sense but also sitting on the tipping point of nonsense. The short film effectively questions our perception of the world and the way we put it into words as well as the way our visual perception connects with our conceptual perception.

Originally from France, Laure now lives and works in London and is represented by Lounge Gallery.

 

Marlene Haring engages with the public through performances. These performances lead to the creation of objects and artefacts that re-engage with the public or present themselves as new, but connected, pieces of work. For one of her performances Marlene collected her hair over a period of time and then covered herself with the hair to create a creature not dissimilar to an Afghan-Hound. She then crawled the streets of Vienna with a crowd in tow. A photograph of herself in this guise, created using photomontage images of her own hair, was taken as she sat sedately on a chair and this has been reproduced in epic proportions to the size of a billboard.

Marlene lives and works in Vienna.

 

Mervyn Arthur has made a series of photographs of cameras. Working with close-up lenses, Mervyn has photographed a selection of interiors of used cameras from different eras. The photographs objectively resemble enclosed rooms where the window is there but concealed. There is something prison-like about them, almost military. This suggests a metaphor for how photography has come to control the contemporary world. The images unconceal a simple mechanical reality, a box, that we feel increasingly threatened by.

Mervyn lives and works in East Grinstead.

 

Olaf Brzeski is a sculptor and filmmaker exploring issues of violence and social interaction that come from the tragic history of Poland during the Second World War. His work also explores western perceptions of Poland since it achieved independence with the fall of Soviet Communism in 1989. His film for EAST09 In Memory of Major Józef Moneta looks at the images of the mythology of soldiers living in hiding in the forests in hiding from an enemy and how they are turning into animals. It is the quality of the film transferred from DVD back to 16mm which gives the quality of surviving war footage to this legend.

Olaf lives and works in Wrocław, Poland and is represented by Czarna Gallery, Warsaw. He has also beeen selected for Take a Look at me Now at The Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts as part of Contemporary Art Norwich.

 

Robin Tarbet dismantles and distorts everyday electronical objects to incorporate them into three-dimensional sculptural cityscapes. Robin draws similarities between the architectural concept of the city and the technological yet mysterious world inside the computer. With little interest in model making, Robin’s Monitored Landscape Series uses live cctv cameras to create an image that, at times, includes the viewer and their surroundings.

Robin studied at Norwich University College of the Arts and the Royal College of Art. He lives and works in London and showed at Outpost in 2008.

 

Stuart Whipps’s photographs of the MG Rover plant in Longbridge document the decline of the British car industry in the late 1970s, which employed most of the men in his family. He began documenting Longbridge, British Leyland’s factory in 2004. By 2006 the 6000 staff were informed of temporary closure. Production of MG Rover has been transferred to Nanjing where he has also photographed. His work for EAST will include a series found photographs of Longbridge in the 1950s and his exploration of coverage of red Robo and the unions during the Winter of Discontent the year he was born. Originally MG meant Morris Garages, it now means Modern Gentlemen, an interesting comment on shifting cultural values and perceived national identities.

Stuart lives and works in Birmingham.

 

Ursula Mayer’s films reflect upon, and dismantle elements of, cinematic narrative. Referencing architecture, the Modernist avant-garde and Hollywood’s Golden Age, Ursula’s loosely constructed fictions engage in a dialogue with the conventions of the moving image. For EAST09 Ursula’s film Interiors portrays two women wandering through the London home of architect Ernö Goldfinger and his wife Ursula. The house in Hampstead was a meeting point for the 1930s leftist intelligentsia and European émigrés.

Ursula lives and works in London and Vienna. She showed at the ICA in 2008.

Take a Look at Me Now

Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts

 

Adam Adach
b. 1962, Warsaw.
Adach is a contemporary historic painter, recreating found images, such as discarded photographs, both of his own family and unknown people and places, books and magazines. He is interested in the way in which ideologies, such as communism and fascism, have affected the individual within the different nations of Europe. Although his paintings are far removed from their source imagery, Adach maintains that the documentary aspect of the found photograph allows him to explore "a different dimension" of the image "without losing its link to history". Adach's work has been exhibited in New York at D'Amelio Terras gallery and in Paris at the Musee d'Art Moderne and the Musee National d'Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou.

 

Paweł Althamer
b. 1967, Warsaw.
Althamer’s work incorporates the human body and the self-portrait in particular, focussing on life lived in the margins and on themes of loneliness, alienation and isolation. In parallel to a career that has involved making work for exhibitions throughout Europe and the US, Althamer has for many years led a ceramics class for the Nowolipie Group, an organisation in Warsaw for adults with multiple sclerosis and other disabilities. The experience provides a rich source of ideas for Althamer – ‘they teach me to be more mad’. On show are ceramic biplanes made by the group and a video documenting a flight organised for the group by the artist – an experience arranged to realise an ambition to fly in a biplane and during which the participants gain a new perspective on the city of Warsaw. Recent projects include Skulptur Projekte Münster 07, the 4th Berlin Biennial for Contemporary Art (2006), the Venice Biennale (2003) and Manifesta 3 (2000). Solo exhibitions include: Centre Pompidou, Paris (2006), Zacheta, National Gallery of Art, Warsaw (2006), Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht (2004).

 

Rafal Bujnowski
b. 1974, Krakow/Wadowice.
Rafal Bujnowski is one of the most radical and intelligent contemporary painters in Poland. Commissioned for Take a Look at Me Now is a series of works based on views through a venetian blind (currently in process). Described in a schematic dark grey on white, the images on the canvas are recognisable as figure and landscape, but the stark horizontal lines of the blind give the composition a particularly formal geometry.
Bujnowski was a co-founder and member of the Ładnie group (1995-2001) and founder and curator of the Open Gallery in Krakow (1998-2001). Bujnowski has previously exhibited in the UK at Ibid Project Gallery, London, Window Gallery, London and the Norwich Gallery.

 

Nicolas Grospierre
b. 1975, Geneva. Lives and works in Warsaw.
Nicholas Grospierre works both as a documentary and a conceptual photographer. His documentary projects often explore the collective hopes and memories associated with modernist architecture, now that the utopian ambitions that inspired them have faded away. These works extend the real geometry of communist era architecture to the artist’s ideal proportions. The emalite images explore the formal beauty of this obsolete building material while Zory celebrates the determination to colour and personalise the uniform spaces of the concrete flats in which so many people still live. Recent exhibitions include Mausoleum (with Olga Mokrzycka), Raster Gallery, Warsaw,2007; Hydroklinika, Artist’s House, Jerusalem, 2008. Awarded the Golden Lion for best national Pavilion at the 2008 Architecture Biennale, Venice, for the exhibition Hotel Polonia, The Afterlife of Buildings, with Kobas Laska.

 

Katarzyna Kozyra
b. 1963, Warsaw, Trento and Berlin.
Katarzyna Kozyra gained early notoriety in Poland for her video works of the 1990s and is now highly acclaimed internationally for her film and performance work. A Summertale, 2998, is the most recent episode in an ambitious multimedia project In Art Dreams Come True. Begun in 2003, these work reveal different aspects of Kozyra’s exploration of music, performance, fantasy and feminity and have been developed through her close collaboration with Berlin transvestite Gloria Viagra and her singing instructor, the Maestro. Summertale reveals a strange narrative involving the artist and her collaborators. Drawing on the menace of central european folklore – the dark tales of the Brothers Grimm – the artist, maestro and Gloria find themselves in a summer paradise within which lies fear and violence. Kozyra has exhibited internationally for over ten years and represented Poland at the 48th Venice Biennial in 1999, winning an honorary mention. Recent solo shows include The Midget Gallery Presents …, Aarhus Kunstbygning, 2008, Summertale, Zak/Branicka, Berlin, 2008, Postmasters Gallery, New York, 2008; Weserburg Museum für Moderne Kunst, Bremen, 2008; Ludwig Museum, Budapest, 2007; Galerie Steinek, Vienna, 2007.

 

Anna Molska
b. 1983, Warsaw.
Anna Molska’s video work is distinguished by a particular visual relationship to the history of Russian Constructivism and the 20th century Polish avant-garde combined with mesmerising and disruptive soundtracks. Work and Power 2007-08 juxtaposes two video screens. On one we see the clean white and red lines of a squash court in which white balls roll and bounce, suggesting a kinetic sculpture as much as game. This formal arena of athletic power is placed against a scene in which a group of male workers build
a triangular structure (like the bleachers built to seat crowds at sporting events) in the middle of a muddy field. At the end they pose on the platform and introduce themselves, providing a finale to their unrehearsed and utilitarian performance. Molska recently completed studies at Warsaw's Academy of Fine Arts with Grzegorz Kowalski, in his famous ‘Smithy’ (‘Kowalnia’), the studio from which emerged some of the most interesting artists in Poland since 1989 (Althamer, Zmijewski, Kozyra). Her work has been included in the 2008 Berlin Biennale, The Skin: New Video From Poland, Museum for Contemporary Art, New York, 2008; 4th Samsung Art Master Competition at the CCA ‘Zamek Ujazdowski’, 2007 (Second Prize for her film Tanagrama).

 

Szymon Roginski
b. 1975, Gdansk. Lives and works in Warsaw.
In 2001 Szymon Roginski began looking at the landscape in the USA, making photographs with a medium format Mamuya 7 camera which he continues to use today. More recently, Roginski has made a number of works which form the series Synthesis, in which he captures the mood and surreal nature of artificial light at night. Driving through the night from his home city of Warsaw, through remote towns and down deserted roads, the artist looked for a filmic, bizarre and eerie quality in the landscape. ‘I realized that all around me there is an undiscovered area that had not been photographed in modern times. I started working on it in extremely harsh conditions – autumn was turning in to winter, so Poland was monochromatic, depressing, dirty and cold.’ Roginski has exhibited in numerous galleries and museums as well as the Photo Biennale, Thessaloniki, Greece (2008) and the Polish Biennale of Photography (2007).

 

Janek Simon
b. 1977 Krakow.
Janek Simon’s work began in video, programming, and computer animation. Simon also produces live video performances and music visualization under the pseudonym VjJansi.
Simon’s objects reflect the raw aesthetic of his DIY relationship with technology – he teaches himself to make works, such as a digital watch, through instructions and interest groups found on-line – developing a working strategy only made possible by the internet in the last 5 years. His work investigates this access to knowledge as well as the increasingly close and ambiguous relationships between culture and economy within neo-liberal capitalism. The strategies he employs can be subversive, sometimes bordering on anarchistic, but always remain at their core pragmatic. Simon is a founder of the discussion forum and art space Goldex Poldex, Krakow. He has had solo shows at the Gallery of Contemporary Art Bunkier Sztuki, Krakow, 2007, and at the National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, 2005. Simon has also exhibited at Manifesta 7, 2008, and at the Arnolfini, Bristol, 2008.

 

Zorka Wollny
b. 1980, Krakow.
Since 2004, Zorka Wollny has been producing live performances based on human movement and interaction in space, creating subtle physical compositions. She looks at borders between the self and a role, between the private and the artificial, moments of abandon and the moments when our behaviour is governed by social norms and customs. To make Flee the Frame Wollny took a group of friends to the train station in Ankara, Turkey. Arming each with a video camera, the aim was to catch other participants on film, without being caught yourself. The resulting 5 monitor installation documents this complex game of chase within the sober, functional environment of an urban transport hub. Wollny has had solo shows at the National Museum, Krakow, 2006, Museum Sztuki Łódź, 2007 and 2009, Galeria Fait, Krakow, 2005, Jagiellonian University, Krakow 2004 and Ikea, Krakow, 2004.

 

Artur Zmijewski
b. 1966, Warsaw.
Artur Zmijewski is a filmmaker and artist whose semi-documentary films and photographs broach the subject of the human body as the foundation for human existence and the origin of illness and decay. In a radical and direct way, Zmijewski uses art to record experiments which explore human psychology and sociology.
The work on show documents the last exhibition at the Foksal Gallery Foundation, Warsaw, of senior Polish artist Oscar Hansen. The film records Hansen’s project to propose a contemporary work of architecture to stand in relationship to the soviet Palace of Culture and Science at the heart of Warsaw. But the real subject of the work is the artist and his creative practice, the process of making and negotiating an exhibition in the last months of his life. Zmijewski has exhibited at Documenta 12, 2007, Venice Biennale, 2005, and Manifesta 4, 2002.

 

Wojtek Bakowski
b. 1979, Poznań.
Wojtek Bakowski is an artist, poet and musician. He makes animated films, audio-performances, alternative music, drawings and sound-sculpture. Bakowski’s band Kot (Polish for cat and slang for ‘dust bunny’) use his collection of old boom boxes and obsolete technology to compose with the white noise of our discarded electrical stuff. Spoken Movie II is a camera-less film made with a series of drawings and collage. Bizarre images, transforming and reoccurring, combine with an intimate, breathy voice-over to lend the work an unsettling sense of feverish delirium. Wotjek’s work uses banal observations from an urban life to suggest intensely personal and strange psychologies. Bakowski’s work has been included in exhibitions at the National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, Leto gallery in Warsaw, 2008, the Mediation Biennale, Poznań, 2008, and the Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw, 2008.

 

Olaf Brzeski
b. 1975, Wrocław.
Olaf Brzeski creates installations, films and objects, combining a dark imagination with resin, ceramics, bronze and latex. Brzeski uses his sculptures to create accomplished, narrative projects with distorted versions of reality. His series of ceramic sculptures are bizarre and monstrous in their original form, and then broken by the artist and pieced back together. Within the immaculate spaces of the SCVA they powerfully communicate his delight in the imperfect and the pleasure he takes in messing things up – enjoying the process of both creation and destruction. Brzeski has shown in the International Triennale of Contemporary Art (ITCA), Prague, and at the Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw and is selected for East International 2009, Norwich University College of the Arts.

 

Galeria Rusz, Torun
Galeria Rusz is an art group based in Torun established by Joanna Górska (1973) and Rafał Góralski (1973). They are best known for their public-space projects – painted billboards with disturbing messages conveying underlying social criticism. Galeria Rusz is the name given to their own billboard located at Szosa Chełmińska, Torun, which is perhaps the longest running billboard project to operate in the same location (since 1999). The works they show there, along with their murals and paintings, confront their home audience with uncomfortable ideas, prejudices and shared assumptions about cultural norms and attitudes to Poland’s recent past. The texts carried on these works hit hard, carrying messages such as Rudeness – We are so good at it that we should export it, but their impact is mediated by the colour and humour of the images that accompany them. Recent exhibitions include Patriotism of Tomorrow, Instytut Sztuki Wyspa Gdansk, 2006, Views 2007, Zacheta Warsaw and Out of Sth, BWA Awangarda, Wroc?aw, 2008

 

Piotr Żyliński
b. 1983, Koło
Piotr Żyliński recently graduated from the Academy of Art, Poznań. Pod Lipami (the title comes from the name of a housing estate in Poznań) is a composition that uses a partial view of a moving lift. The lift is ordinary, the kind we might find in any block of flats built in the Communist era in any city in Poland. The images that move across the screen are accompanied by the soft click and thud of the lift rising through the building. Yet the image presented is minimal, elegant and formal - a regular glide and stop of brown, white and black. Żyliński has made beautiful the utilitarian movement of the lift, reminding us of the geometry and flat colour of 20th century constructions and their inherent relationship to architecture. Recent exhibitions include: Vouge, Instytut Sztuki Wyspa, Gdańsk 2009, Nie Ma Sorry, New Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw 2008, 5th Samsung Art Master Competition at the CCA, Warsaw 2008 (prize for video installation So Its Human) Dark Ages, Leipzig 2008, Art Must Be Beautiful, Stary Browar, Poznań.

No Visible Means of Escape

Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery

 

Darren Almond (b.1971) is a British artist based in London.
Recent solo exhibitions include Parasol Unit, London (2008), SITE Santa Fe, USA (2007), Museum Folkwang, Germany (2006). Group shows include ‘Tate Triennial’, Tate Britain, London (2009), ‘Moscow Biennale’, Russia (2007) and ‘The Turner Prize’, Tate Britain, London, (2005).

 

Christine Borland (b.1965) is a Scottish artist based in Scotland.
Recent solo exhibitions include ‘Simbodies and Nobodies’, Ormeau Baths Gallery, Belfast (2009), ‘With Practice’, Newlyn Art Gallery, Penzance (2007) and ‘Christine Borland’, The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh (2006). Group exhibitions include ‘Darwin’s Canopy’, National History Museum, London and ‘Imagining Science’, Art Gallery of Alberta, Canada (both 2008) and ‘If it didn’t exist you’d have to invent it: a partial Showroom history’, The Showroom, London (2006).

 

Louise Bourgeois (b.1911, Paris) has lived and worked in New York since 1938.
Recent solo exhibitions include the major international exhibition ‘Louise Bourgeois: Retrospective’ at Tate Modern, London, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C (2007-2009) and ‘Nature Study’, Inverleith House, Royal Botanical Gardens, Edinburgh (2008).

 

Dora García (b.1965) is a Spanish artist based in Brussels
Recent solo exhibitions include ‘Be an Outlaw, Be a Hero’, Ellen de Bruijne Projects, Amsterdam (2008), ‘The first image is an unconditional close-up of an eyelid", Wilkinson gallery, London (2008) and "What A F****** Wonderful Audience’, galerie Michel Rein (2009), Paris. 2009 Group exhibitions include 'Friends of the Divided Mind', Royal College of Art, London, 'Playing the City'. Schirn Kunstalle Frankfurt am Main, Germany, and Athens and Lyon Biennales.

 

Paul Granjon (b.1965) is a French artist based in Wales.
Solo exhibitions include ‘Positive Activities’, Le Lieu, Quebec City, Canada (2006), Galerie Justine Lacroix, Marseille, France (2005) and ‘Machines by Paul Granjon’, Mandrak, Grenoble, France (2002). Group exhibitions include MUDAM, Luxemburg (2006), ‘In Between Time Festival’, Arnolfini, Bristol (2006),  ‘Somewhere Else’, Welsh Pavilion at 51st Venice Biennale, Italy (2005)

 

Ben Langlands (b. 1955) and Nikki Bell (b.1959) are British artists based in London.
Solo exhibitions include 'Films & Animations 1978-2008), Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh (2008), 'Whitechapel Laboratory', Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (2007) and 'domain', Milton Keynes Gallery, UK (2005). Group exhibitions include 'Conceptual Model, Recent Acquisitions', Tate Modern, London and 'Tales of Time & Space', Folkstone Triennial, UK (both 2008). 'Speed 3' IVAM, Valencia, Spain (2007).

 

Tim Lee (b. 1975) is a Korean artist based in Vancouver
Solo exhibitions include Presentation House Gallery, Vancouver, Canada and Galerie Rudiger Schottle, Munich (both 2007) and ‘Retrospective Public Enemy 1988-91’, Lisson Gallery, London and Cohan & Leslie, New York (2006). Group exhibitions include ‘All About Laughter – Humor in Contemporary Art’, Mori Art Museum, Japan, ‘For Sale’, Cristina Guerra, Lisbon, Portugal (both 2007) and ‘Wrong’, Klosterfelde, Berlin (2006).

 

Carrie Levy is an American artist based in New York
Solo exhibitions include ‘Impaired’ (2007), and ‘Domestic Stages’ (2005) both Daniel Cooney Fine Art, New York. Group exhibitions include ‘Male’, works from the collection of Vince Aletti, Presentation House, Vancouver, Canada and White Columns, New York (2008) and ‘Fotofestiwal’, Lodz Art Centre Factory, Poland, (2008).

 

Zbigniew Libera is a Polish artist based in the Czech Republic
Solo exhibitions include Galerie Krinzinger, Vienna (2007) and ‘Zbigniew Libera: Work from 1984-2004’, University of Michigan, School of Art & Design, USA (2006). Group exhibitions include ‘At Last, Something New’, The National Museum, Krakow, Poland and ‘Manipulations on Economies of Deceit’, Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw (both 2007). A major retrospective will take place in November 2009 at Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw.

 

Manu Luksch is an Austrian artist based in London
Luksch’s films have been included in group exhibitions and international film festivals including  'Feigned Innocence' Videotage/ Osage Art Foundation, Hong Kong (2009), ‘Hors Piste’, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2008/09), ‘Goodbye Privacy’, Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria, (2007) and ‘Satellite of Love’, Witte de With, Rotterdam (2006)

 

Marc Quinn is a British artist based in New York
Solo exhibitions ‘Evolution’ White Cube, London (2008), ‘Sphinx’, Mary Boone Gallery, New York (2007), MACRO, Rome and Groninger Museum, The Netherlands (both 2006). Group exhibitions include ‘Pleasures of Collecting Part III’, Bruce Museum, Connecticut (2008), ‘Art of the Garden’, Tate Britain, London and Gwangju Biennale (both 2004).

 

Artur Zmijewski is a Polish artist based in Poland
Solo exhibitions include Camera Austria, Kunsthaus Graz, Austria and Museum of Modern Art, New York (both 2009), Te Tuhi Centre for the Arts, Manukau City and Basis voor Actuele Kunst, Utrecht (both 2008). Group exhibitions include ‘Promise of the Past’, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2010), ‘Opposition and Dialogues’, Kunstverein Hannover and ‘Acting Out’, ICA, Boston (both 2009).

Photo-ID

The Forum Norwich

 

Åsa Johannesson – This Swedish photographer explores the significance of photos from her childhood, in which she and her non-identical twin sister form the subject, and the ways gender impacts on identity. Her exploration looks at how seemingly innocent memories and experiences captured within the photographs can be shaped by the paternal perspective of her grandfather taking them.

 

Mark Edwards - A Norfolk based landscape photographer, Mark is the only local photographer exhibiting at Photo-ID. He is interested in how the landscape that surrounds us is not only shaped by us but helps to shape us and our identities. His work explores the association of landscapes with identity, how they ingrain in us a sense of belonging and how landscapes in art have contributed to our national and cultural identity.

 

Carl Jaycock – explores identity using print and digital imaging.  In ‘My Ancestors’, he uses passport photos of himself, morphed with a variety of other faces, and arranged to create a larger image suggesting both the Union Jack and the bearded Darwin. Using smaller everyday images to create a larger overall image, he aims to raise questions about how images and identities are cultural constructions.

 

Simon Terrill – Simon is well known for his work exploring crowds and for Photo-ID he will be looking at the crowds of people that exist within a cemetery, both above and below ground. Considering how the cemetery, like a photograph, acts as a recording device for posterity, Simon looks to investigate both how we gain insight into the identities of the deceased and the role cemeteries play in how the living remember them. One of the images Simon will be exhibiting is of Norwich’s Rosary cemetery and its visitors, a photograph that the public were invited to participate in, taken in May 2009.

 

Kim Cunningham – Kim returns to the Mosney Butlins Holiday Camp, which she both visited and worked in whilst growing up in Ireland. In stark contrast to its glossy heyday as a popular holiday camp once photographed by John Hinde, it’s now a refugee centre housing over 900 asylum seekers from all over the world.  Her work explores the displaced identity of refugees in a place that, for many others, holds memories of their family holidays at Butlins.

 

Marlene Haring – Marlene will be in Norwich throughout June taking 36,000 photographs, using a total of 1000 film rolls, for her installation, ‘Choosing is Losing’. The undeveloped films will be available to purchase for £1 from a vending machine in The Forum, allowing visitors to take home an unseen collection of her work. You will decide whether to develop it or not!

 

Joanna Kane – Joanna’s work uses digital imaging to create images of individuals from numerical and coded data. The images created are geometric, mathematically generated 3-D data portraits or ‘profiles’ and topically prompt questions about the ethical issues raised by DNA databases, biometric data, surveillance cameras and ID cards.

 

Evi Lemberger – In a series of photographs, this documentary photographer explores the Ukrainian region Transcarpathia. Since Transcarpathia is a transient and isolated region that has been ‘owned’ by a number of different countries during the course of its history, inhabitants experience a confused sense of identity, language and a mixed ancestral heritage. Her photographs explore the contrast between its bleak setting and the vibrant style of the people and the way they express themselves in the decoration of their homes.

 

Dave Lewis – His installation, composed of both complex back-lit transparencies built up of images related to aspects of identity politics together with direct, black and white, male portraits, invites us to sample his research into issues around science and how it interfaces with our construction of identity, in particular racial and ethnic identity.

 

Paul Sucksmith - A Newcastle based photographer. His pictures are taken from his window looking out onto the city’s vibrant nightlife, capturing intoxicated party-goers wandering the streets beneath. Primarily, Paul’s work is concerned with how our identities are influenced and changed thanks to external influences such as alcohol, narcotics and fancy dress.

Fishing for Trout

Norwich Arts Centre

 

Frances Kearney studied Photography at the Royal College of Art; she exhibits nationally and internationally and has work in collections including the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Saatchi Collection.

OUTPOST Gallery

 

Jamie Shovlin is an artist interested in the tension between truth and fiction, reality and invention, history and memory. His painstakingly researched and executed works merge inherently flawed systems, pseudo-scientific exactitude and doubtful philosophical propositions with the seemingly objective experience of the archive. Through his projects Shovlin questions how information becomes authoritative and explores the way that we map and classify the world in order to understand it.

Jamie Shovlin (born 1978) studied at the Royal College of Art (2001-2003). His solo exhibitions include 'The Evening Redness in the West', Haunch of Venison, Zurich (2009); 'The Ties That Bind', Unosunove, Rome (2008); ‘A Dream Deferred’, Haunch of Venison, London (2007); 'In Search of Perfect Harmony', Tate Britain, London (2006), and  'Lustfaust: A Folk Anthology 1976-1981', 'Freight & Volume', New York (2006). He was included in 'This Much is Certain', RCA, London (2004), 'Galleon and Other Stories', Saatchi Gallery, London (2004), 'Beck’s Futures', ICA, London; CCA, Glasgow; Arnolfini, Bristol (2006); 'Elephant Cemetery', Artists Space, New York (2007) and 'Mythologies' Haunch of Venison, London (2009).

 

Matthew Darbyshire (born Cambridge, 1977, lives in London) lives in a bubble of deep turquoises, fuchsia pinks and acid yellows - he sees these colours everywhere and so, he points out, do you. Darbyshire is interested in the non-specificity of today's design language: the fact that bright CMYK dots are the logo for an estate agent and a cinema, as well as a NHS walk-in centre; that Arne Jacobsen egg chairs can be found in London's Zetter boutique hotel as well as in recently rebranded McDonald's restaurants.

Matthew Darbyshire studied his Post-Graduate Diploma at Royal Academy Schools, London, UK in 2005. Exhibitions include, Tate Triennial 2009, Tate Britain, London, Curated by Nicholas Bourriaud (2009).  Herald St, London - Hayward Gallery Project Space, London, UK. Curated by Tom Morton (2009), Solo presentation, Liste 08, Basel, Switzerland (2008) Nought to Sixty , Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, UK; Presented as part of the programme Blades House, Gasworks, London, UK (2008). White Columns, New York, USA (screening), 2008.

 

OUTHOUSE

 

Magdalena Kownacka and Albert Godycki
Magdalena Kownacka is Co-Director and curator for F.A.I.T (Foundation Artists-Innovation-Theory) gallery in Krakow, Poland with Gawel Kownacki. At Outhouse, Kownacka will be joined by Albert Godycki, a curator currently based in Krakow who has an interest in the intersection of the historical and contemporary in curatorial practice, and how exhibitions often pilot historical narratives. Together they will be researching for a project through discussion and interviews with other artists. 

 

Plan 9
Sophie Mellor is Co-Founder, and Karen di Franco is Co-Director of Plan 9, an artist-led visual arts organization in Bristol. Mellor’s practice focuses on creating discussion through action and provocation, whilst di Franco explores narrative and archival research. As a strategy to combine their artistic practice with their roles as directors of Plan 9, they initiated Trade Union (2008), part of the Far West project at the Arnolfini to investigate social and economic issues encountered by free-lance artists. 

 

Momus
Momus began life as a musician, but since 2000 has developed his career as an artist working in performance. For Outhouse, he will present the premiere of Widow Twanky's Deathbed, a performance in which he plays a delirious pantomime dame recalling her life in song, during her dying moments. Momus conducted a Shinto-inspired rice experiment during Bridge Berlin 2008, and presented with Aki Sasamoto, Love is the End of Art at Zach at Feuer Gallery, New York in 2009.

 

Dan Griffiths
Dan Griffiths uses statements and symbols, actions and interventions that represent culturally specific meanings. Using borrowed documentation Griffiths comments on the adoption of imagery for political or commercial interest. Works such as Rebel Learning and Polite Notice to Shopper have dealt with the presentation and dissemination of information in urban environments. Griffiths has shown in London, Sheffield, Edinburgh and Copenhagen, and is a member of Cubitt gallery and studios in London.

 

Daniel Seiple
Daniel Seiple works with interventions and installations re-contextualizing statements, objects and environments. From organising bus tours in a gallery courtyard, to transporting a boat wreck to a gallery, Seiple re-directs narratives and reassesses the gallery context. During 2008 he was artist-in-residence at the Alhamra Art Gallery, Lahore, Pakistan. Seiple is Director and Co-founder of Skulturenpark, Berlin_Zentrum, and runs Homie, an exhibition space in his apartment.

 

Sovay Berriman
Sovay Berriman uses a variety of media in works which range from pencil and ink on paper, to sculpture and urban interventions. Through her project Symbol Archive Berriman has documented a body of research that takes the form of events, exhibitions, talks, screenings and commissions. She programmed the Art & Writing series at Spike Island, 2009 and has recently shown in Sale, Royal Standard, Liverpool, 2009 and Clap Your Hands Say… Rhys & Hannah Present, Bristol 2008.  

 

Chloe Brooks
Chloe Brooks physically transforms spaces through apparently straightforward sculptural and architectural intervention. Creating often blunt alterations, Brooks subverts the use of spaces, prompting re-evaluation of the works and their context. She draws attention to the idiosyncrasies of place, both physically and socially defined. In 2009 Brooks had a solo show The Parade Passed, at Round the Corner, Treatro de Trinidad, Lisbon, and has recently shown at Spike Island, Bristol.

 

Makiko Nagaya
Makiko Nagaya’s installations look at early psychoanalysis, film, fashion and illusion. Her work deals with historical trajectories through material remains and explores the history of illusion in galleries and museums. Recent projects include an intervention at L’Ecole Nationale Supereure des Beaux Arts, Paris in 2009 and a solo show Moths to/from a Flame at T1+2 Gallery, London 2008. Nagaya is Co-Director of Redux projects (research, exhibition, documentation, urban experiment) in London.

 

Hannah James
Hannah James’ practice examines the illusionist qualities of painting and the inextricably physical qualities of sculpture. The work evokes understated theatricality, functioning as miniature props within a stage. Hannah James is one half of the artist-led collaboration Rhys & Hannah Present, which creates a platform for emerging artists in Bristol through publications and temporary exhibition sites. Recent shows include Screen, Chert, Berlin 2009 and OPENENDED, Castlefield Gallery, Manchester 2008.

 

No Fixed Abode
No Fixed Abode is the artist partnership Terry Slater and Horatio Eastwood. Through the initiation of temporary structures of communal production, they explore interpretations of the domestic and global. For the project Caban Unnos: It’s Now Or Never (2008),NFArealised the construction of a temporary one-night house on Alexanderplatz in Berlin, through a programme of workshops and talks on vernacular architecture, issues of land-ownership and the practical aspects of clandestine building.

 

Toby Huddlestone
Toby Huddlestone’s practice is split between making works in the studio and action-based interventions staged in galleries. Binding both elements is a conceptual framework which draws upon themes of institutional critique, the formulation or importance of strategy, and adopting and subverting the art-world systems.  Recent group shows include Coalesce: Happenstance, Smart Project Space, Amsterdam 2009, A Line, A Road, Abridged at Hold and Freight, London 2009.

 

Jennifer Campbell
Jennifer Campbell works with performance, installation and sculpture, exploring and reacting to space and audience. She creates fragile costumes and props, which become the visual traces of performances and actions. Through sculpture, Campbell explores the delicate and temporary manipulation of materials. Campbell graduated from the Norwich School of Art and Design in 2008, and recently performed at Kunstwerk Bazaar, OUTPOST Members Show selected by curator Andrew Hunt.

 

Emma Hart
Emma Hart’s practice looks at the role of lens-based media in action-based and performative work. Challenging our traditional expectations of cameras and projectors, Hart presents them as active catalysts in the work. Using live performance, film and video, Hart simultaneously produces and presents. Hart has performed at Late at Tate, Tate Britain, the ICA, Rotterdam Film Festival, and was artist-in-residence at the Camden Arts Centre from June 2008 – April 2009.

 

Ilona Sagar
Ilona Sagar looks to the processes of making to inform narratives in her work. Working with performance, film and assemblage, Sagar explores themes of spectatorship, theatrical narrative and material language. Sagar manipulates common materials such as ply wood and plaster in order to present dramatic visual illusions, alluding to something familiar yet other. Projects include The Grandeur Mass (Auditoria) at T1+2 Gallery, London 2008, DA! Labyrinth at Shunt! London Bridge.

 

Jantine Wijnja
Jantine Wijnja stages performances, events and installations, a practice which revolves around the notion of ‘articulated haziness’: carefully rendered crystallizations of, or tributes to, obviously unclear events. Wijnja employs visual and linguistic vocabularies to explore the ghost-like feeling of history and national identity. She has shown in Amsterdam, Belgrade, Bristol and Edinburgh and is Co-Director of Hotel Mariakapel, an artist-run residency and project space in Hoorn, Holland.