I SEE MYSELF THERE, WHERE I AM NOT

30^th July – 31^th August 2010

“I see myself there, where I am not”, brings together the work of 10 artists who examine the various ways art is used as a heteropological accessory, a mode realised by the gaze of the viewer, simultaneously representing and unpicking utopian ideals by channeling veins of the uncanny with fantasy, narrative, humour, styles of documentation. Foucault describes the heterotopia as an enacted utopia; a counter-site; a representation; a mirror of something unreal that exists in reality. It is not the reflection that is the heterotopia, but the mirror itself and its surroundings that contain the fiction.

Stretching the length of the far wall of the exhibition space, a ‘picture’ window offers a gratifying panoramic view of the future Olympic city. Like that of the Greek amphitheatre on the hill, overlooking the metropolis in the valley below, this lofty positioning encourages an inherent voyeurism through its segregation. It takes on the properties of viewing booth, through which the flattening of a view, seen from a lofty or private space, is highly exaggerated.

Rather than use this hierarchical perspective to comment directly on the reality laid before it, “I see myself there, where I am not” flips the scenario to imagine that the glass of the window serves, not as the transpicuous barrier between the interior space of the exhibition and exterior space of the world outside, but as a mirror. It places the show within the space of its reflection, and frames each artist’s work as the unattainable vision inside.

Greta Alfaro
Melissa Bugarella
Jorge Cabieses-Valdes
Mary Cork
Blue Curry
David Ferrando-Giraut
Maria Karantzi
Harry Meadows
Gorka Mohamed
Conrad Ventur

Full details and images of the show please see: www.iseemyselfthere.tumblr.com
Exhibition curated by Mary Cork

Hackney Wicked Festival: Fri 30.07 at 5-8pm, Sat 31.07 & Sun 01.08 at 12pm-5pm.
Performance by The Chicago Boys, Sunday 1st Aug 1-2pm

First Thursday Private view: Thur 05.08 from 18:00

————————————————————————————————————

Further information on the artists participating:

————————————————————————————————————

The work of Greta Alfaro (b.1977, Spain) is a reflection about the vulnerability of life with regard to the appearance of absolute control that we attempt to create.

Greta Alfaro is currently studying a MA in Photography at the Royal College of Art, granted by the Genesis Foundation. Among her recent solo shows are those celebrated at Dryphoto arte contemporanea, Italy, Carpe Diem Art & Research, Portugal, and Galería Marta Cervera, Madrid.

————————————————————————————————————

Melissa Bugarella (b.1981, Italy) is an Italian artist based in London.

Her work evokes ego-fantastic scenarios and expanded fantasies, swinging between vivid dreams and cult-like images, her sculptures, videos and music emerge raw from the world of the personal to reach out to the collective. She graduated from the Goldsmiths MA in 2009, and has been actively showing in the UK, most recently in “Cross Currents” The Barbican, London.

————————————————————————————————————

Jorge Cabieses Valdes (b.1978, Chile). His practice is concerned with individual and private acts of violence. He graduated in 2008 with an MFA from Goldsmiths College University of London, MA Fine Art University of Chile in 2006 and Ba Fine Arts University of Chile in 2003. He has been exhibited in Gabriela Mistral Gallery, Chile in 2004; Animal Gallery, Chile in 2005; Museo de las Americas, Spain in 2006; Hyunghee Museum, South Korea in 2007; Brussels Bienniale Side Project, Belgium in 2008; Wallis Gallery, London in 2008; De Service Garage, Holland in 2009 and D21, Chile in 2009; among others.

He has obtained FONDART and DIRAC funding programs in 2005 and Presidente de la República Scholarship in 2006. Lives and works in Santiago.

————————————————————————————————————

Mary Cork (b.1980, UK) is an American artist based in London. Often exemplifying a preoccupation with how we, as viewers, assign value and content to ‘loaded’ objects, such as books and keepsakes, her art practice manipulates various methodologies of art making and curating to create contrived scenarios, often manifesting as installations and print based imagery.

She received her MFA in Creative Curating from Goldsmiths College in 2008, her BFA in photography in 2002 from Memphis College of Art. She has shown internationally and in the UK. Her work has recently been shown in “PLAY” Paradise Row (London), Red Bull Music Academy, (London) “Cross Currents”, Barbican Gallery (London) and “Topsy”, Sala Sam Gallery (Santiago, Chile).

————————————————————————————————————

The work of Blue Curry (b. 1974, Nassau, Bahamas) connects us with fantasies of the native, the tropical and the exotic and considers how these constructs are created, reinforced and knowingly played into. His elegant yet shambolic sculptural pieces sit somewhere between the ethnographic find, tourist souvenir and contemporary art object.

He is a recent graduate of the Goldsmiths MFA Fine Art program and has shown work at Art Basel Miami Beach, The Nassauischer Kunstverein, Germany and The Musée International des Arts Modestes, France.

————————————————————————————————————

The work of David Ferrando Giraut (b. 1978, Santiago de Compostela, Spain) deals with a perception of our environment highly influenced by mass media or, better, with the idea of the audiovisual sphere as creator of a new mental ecosystem from which we can not escape. Instead of that, his works propose an attempt to find space for a personal point of view within this sphere; space for individual subjectivity, creativity, and even romanticism. Audiovisual products, in their condition of past time containers, would be the ruins that create a precarious landscape in which to undertake a kind of psychogeographic drift.

David Ferrando Giraut Lives and work in London. He finished an MFA in Art Practice in Goldsmiths College in 2008. Recent exhibitions include: a solo exhibition- “Journeys End in Lovers Meetings” Galería Visor, Valencia, Spain, ARCO 10, Galería Visor. Madrid; Stranger Things Are Happening, at ASPEX, Portsmouth; Modern Times, Vegas Gallery, London; Situación, at the Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea (CGAC), Spain; No Borders (Just N.E.W.S.), an exhibition organized by the International Association of Art Critics (AICA), showing the work of 29 young European artists in La Centrale Electrique, Brussels, The Thessaloniki Centre for Contemporary Art, and Espacio Forja, Valencia, or Pancevo Republic!, part of the XIII Pancevo Art Biennial, Serbia.

————————————————————————————————————

Maria Karantzi (b.1981, Athens) did her bachelors degree at the Athens School of Fine Arts and received her MFA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths College. In her work, she likes to play with misconceptions and to celebrate the triumph of make believe over that of reality. She has exhibited internationally, and was part of the New Contemporaries 2007 exhibition.

————————————————————————————————————

Harry Meadows (b.1980, UK) finds the role of rustic imagery in socially engaged practice at the heart of his concerns. His work imagines symbols from a future Utopia where the ideals of feudal society and socialist principles collide. This work stems from an observation of the use of the arts in smoothing the path of modernity. Here ideological responsibility is abandoned in favour of a pure, insipid image.

Meadows is a Goldsmiths MFA graduate, based in London. He has recently shown at the Barbican Gallery, Sala SAM (Chile), Paradise Row and the Royal Festival Hall. He has been selected to attend Brazier’s International Artist Workshop, August 2010.

————————————————————————————————————

The work of Spanish artist Gorka Mohamed (b.1978, Spain) radiates comic exuberance, but like all burlesque also maintains a sharply critical edge.

Mohamed’s cast of absurd characters (the generic figure of the artist occurs with regularity) are often constructed of, and surrounded by, the implements of art-making and spillage of its history. His appropriation of key elements of the cartoon – googly eyes, exaggerated textures – seem bent on undermining the high-seriousness of art, yet many of his techniques and references pay tribute to its nobler traditions. With rippling lines of colour, Mohamed threads together a singular, uneasy commentary on culture and its edifices. (by Modern edition)

Gorka Mohamed graduated from his MFA at Goldsmiths in 2008, and has recently show at Timothy Taylor Gallery “Ventriloquist”,London, Arco Art Fair 2010 with Galeria Distrito Cuatro, Madrid(Spain), “Code of Being” at Withspace Gallery. Beijing (China) and at DA2 in Salamanca, new acquisitions from Cola Cola Foundation (Spain).

————————————————————————————————————

American artist Conrad Ventur (b. 1977) creates kaleidoscopic environments within the realm of expanded cinema that raise questions regarding time and space, biography, aspiration, longing, sincerity, quotation and captured historical performances. He received his MFA from Goldsmiths College in 2008. Recent solo exhibitions have included The Andy Warhol Museum (Pittsburgh) and Rokeby (London). Ventur is an exhibiting artist in the current ‘Greater New York’ quintennial at MoMA PS1, NYC.

————————————————————————————————————

~ by smokehousegallery on July 30, 2010.