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The Arts Center presents London Now: Are You in Love Yet?
MEMBER PREVIEW: Thursday, January 13th
WHEN: January 14 - March 27, 2005
WHERE: The Arts Center, 719 Central Ave, St. Petersburg, FL 33701
The Exhibition
The Arts Center, St. Petersburg celebrates London NOW: Are You in Love Yet?, an extraordinary exhibition of contemporary young artists hailing from London's East End. London Now features a cutting edge array of visual art, photography, and video installations - created by a selection of artists featured in the 2004 edition of East End Academy, the acclaimed show of London artists at Whitechapel Gallery.
The show tackles a wide range of themes - yet ultimately focuses on the universal contemporary experience of life amidst the hustle and bustle of Europe's premiere capital.
This is the first generation of artists to grow up in such a completely technology-driven, manufactured world, and the ensuing sense of dislocation and alienation, coupled with a humorous determination to thrive in such an environment, runs through virtually the entire collection. Common green spaces are treated with the same awe and reverence that mythical creatures were in past ages, yet with today's must-have artistic accessory, witty resignation, firmly in place.
Opening Night Party
Fire It UP 2: Hip Hot Art Party
January 14th 7 -9 pm; after-party 9 - 11; $30, free admission to after-party at The Bank; 1919 Central Ave., included.
This mod-themed party features a dj spinning Britpop tunes from the 60s through today, gift raffles, and an after-party at St. Petersburg's newest nightclub, The Bank. Renowned raku artisan Don Williams will create handcrafted works of art in on-going demonstrations throughout the evening. All items available for purchase.
Whitechapel Gallery and East End Academy
Just as each artist showcases work influenced directly by their surroundings, Whitechapel Gallery, established in 1901, has been influenced by it's position as artistic standard bearer for Western Europe's most dynamic cultural quarter.
Established by the local vicar of St. Jude's, Whitechapel was designed to create a resident-friendly space for East End denizens to enjoy the burgeoning art offerings. The gallery, with an unprecedented progressive design by renowned Arts and Crafts architect Charles Harrison Townsend, opened to rave reviews, and quickly established itself as one of London's premiere arts spaces. A major renovation in 1985 restored the light infused upper gallery and created a more contemporary space for digital, light-based, and audio installations.
Since its inception, Whitechapel's name has been synonymous with contemporary, often world-changing art: in 1938 Picasso's Guernica was shown as part of the "Aid Spain" exhibition, and David Hockney mounted his first show there in 1970. Jackson Pollock and Lucien Freud, among others, have exhibited major works there.
The East End Academy, Whitechapel's annual show featuring up and coming artists working in London, began in 1932 as an open submission exhibition for "all artists living and working East of the famous Aldgate Pump." The 2004 exhibition was jointly curated by artist Chris Ofili and Chantal Crousel.
Turner Prize winner (1998) Chris Ofili gained notoriety with his infamous dung-covered Virgin Mary painting, which scandalized the art world. Since then, he has won over his many critics and has gone on to represent Britain at the 50th Venice Biennale. Crousel is the owner and curator of Galerie Chantal Crousel in Paris, which represents and showcases a roster of internationally acclaimed contemporary artists.
The artist Sarah Carne's participation as a video artist relies on much more than simply capturing a subject in her lens - her engaging interaction with participants and subjects become an integral component of the work itself, upsetting conventional relationships between filmmaker and subject.
Featured works include "You in Love? You Gonna Be", featuring London commuters caught on camera breaking into laughter at Carne (hidden from sight) as she lovingly sings Nina Simone's ballad "The Look of Love".
"High Noon" explores Manchester's ever changing civic identity and their sense of an encroaching Americanized urban planning structure through the lens of the classic 1952 Western. The deftly edited fly-on-the-wall documentary is populated by Mancusians holding forth on a variety of subjects, which the charismatic Carne creates her own performance piece as stage manager, advocate, and speech prompter.
Mary Lee Jandrell is a professional photographer who tweaks the profession by deliberately employing amateur photographic sensibilities in her striking photos of tourist landmarks, notably urban leisure parks masquerading as pastoral getaways. Slyly poking fun at city dwellers' need to suspend belief when presented with artificial environments, her photographs feature startling juxtapositions of wildlife found nonchalantly lounging in the midst of a man-made urban environment.
A recent Master's graduate from the acclaimed Goldsmiths College, the South African born artist has steadily racked up one artistic coup after another, including being selected by the British Arts Council to exhibit her work at 10 Downing Street.
Olivia Plender's exploration of noir, pulp fiction and bohemia has led to an international slate of residencies at some of the art world's most renowned institutions for contemporary work, including the Visual Research Centre, Dundee Contemporary Arts; Grizedale Arts; and PS1, New York, where she mounted the critically acclaimed "Romantic Detachment", a collaborative visual and performance exhibit mounted jointly in New York and London's Lake District, home of the England's Romantic Movement.
Emi Evora's highly decorative public interiors are often stylized to such a degree that one's only recourse is to begin dreaming of inhabiting it, bringing the exterior full-circle into the interior. Culling images from upscale lifestyle magazines, resort advertisements, and million dollar property ads, she creates a psychological space for the viewer, a space somewhere between the humble security of our daily dwellings and the opulent grandeur of her paintings. Utilizing layers built upon layers, she creates an uneven path through her images, using ample light and shading to lead the viewer past the vaguely unsettling grandeur to the exit.
Zatorski & Zatorski This video collective has presented their often site specific installations in such far-flung locales as the Herzliya Museum in Israel; at the Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon, and at the 1st International Video Art Biennale in Tel Aviv.
EX20 uses a text-illuminated wall, featuring ethereal light to fuse the image on the retina (thus retaining the image even the viewer has closed their eyes). The installation explores the flexibility of meaning in language, using SMS text. 90 billion text messages were sent in Europe last year; SMS text is the fastest evolving new language on the planet.
Louise Brierley's darkly surreal paintings evoke a contemporary no-man's land between the pastoral peace of the suburbs and the hidden corners of the city center. Perceived notions of comfort, ease and safety are thrown into disarray by the discovery of hidden, often humorous fairy-tale figures nestled amongst the lush greenery. "Naughty Puppies II", one of the pieces in London NOW, slyly pokes fun at the nostalgia of childhood play-time memories filtered through adult insecurities. David Harrison fuses an interest in conservation with a sense of the absurd to create slightly sinister folkloric tableaus of nature taking revenge on mankind's overbearing influence. Everyday objects find their way into both his nursery rhyme-like paintings and sculptures, creating a surreal backdrop of disuse and waste.
