FRONTIERS EXHIBITION // 21st - 28th MAY 2009 

THE ELEPHANT ROOMS - UNIT 316, THE ELEPHANT AND CASTLE SHOPPING CENTRE

FRONTIER. Denoting a geographical area, a line drawn onto a map separating two regions or countries. The word also has psychological connotations if we relate it to the idea of the wilderness beyond the frontierland. The ‘Frontier’ becomes a geographical place in a state of psychological flux between civilization and barbarity.

OR 

FRONTIER. A state of knowing, we live in a world where the boundaries of knowledge are constantly being redefined around the lines of what science can achieve, of what we know to be right and wrong, true and false. We can send radio signals into space, cure disease and fly thirty eight thousand feet into the air whilst traveling at six hundred miles-per-hour. Frontier references knowledge.

FRONTIERS. For us Elephant & Castle represents a frontier between South East London and London. 

ARTISTS EXHIBITING

CLAIRE BAILY - operates through a system of borrowed of references from the past and present in order to create an aesthetic realm that critically engages with the urban landscape. With urban design slowly touching every aspect of our daily lives Baily’s work investigates the effects of physically embedding certain ideologies upon our everyday sites of interaction. Through the placing of a number of inter-changeable components in her sculptures they explore social formulas using the gallery as a landscape.  

HARRY BEER - is interested in an exploration of the blurring between the concrete and the virtual; the paintings are fundamentally of nothing but still to hint at some unknowable core. Beer’s paintings produce airless and impalpable spaces that seem to be in an awkward state of flux, sitting precariously between the realms of abstract and figurative, the tangible and intangible. The landscapes are vast, yet contained and microscopic in which the elements become suspended yet simultaneously in motion. There is an illusion of depth that invites the viewer into the spaces produced only to be repelled by the flatness and the painterly imperfections of the image.  

BRADFORD BAHAMAS - are a group of experimental noise musicians and artists who self-consciously attack ideas about authorship in music by bootlegging vinyl and adding it to the catalogue of their record label, EMI. 

MITCHELL BRIDGES - is behind the artist run FRIENDLY STREET GALLERY that has hosted numerous exhibitions and gigs over the last year. His photo series of Morley’s Fried Chicken Shops deals with the subtle differences in their décor and façade that allow them to exist as an oxymoronic herd across South East London. The images juxtapose the consistency of photography with the inconsistency of Morley’s itself that allows the viewer to re-examine their environment.

CHARLESWORTH, LEWANDOWSKI & MANN - formed in 2005 to pursue common ground in their individual specific art practices. Their politically rooted works borrow from protest, popular, pirate and DIY cultures, often in order to comment on or ‘remix’ specific events in modern history.

SAMUEL CRAVEN - conspiracy theories, hypnotism and gangster rap are some of the bristling issues that young artist Samuel Craven wrestles with. Working with a variety of different media, Craven makes photographs, performances and was recently celebrated for producing a series of one hundred individual hand drawn sprirograph drawings.

PHILIPP VON FRANKENBERG - is interested in the creation of displacement in art work and the nature of redundancy, by creating an analogous structure of wood that dislocates the source of the strip lights there is a redundancy between object and target. This has a distancing effect upon the viewer, causing them to move into an area of unfamiliar experience. 

BEN FREEMAN - has studied at both Camberwell and the RCA, he uses typography, photography and dialogue to create work that is ultimately concerned with human behaviour but also plays with the distinctions between journalism,  design and research. He recently published a book about war graves in Slovenia called GROBISCE and is the editor of FUN magazine. 

GUY GORMLEY - produces images of spaces that don’t have a specific use or are in-between uses, often they are wasted spaces that are open to modes of appropriation. Several of the photographs form the series were take on the outskirts of service stations, where the relationship between the unregulated places around the edges and the controlled mono-climate of the inside are explored. 

TOM HARRAD - Tom Harrad’s work largely consists of paintings, both abstract and figurative. His is concerned with the places and people directly around him. ‘Peckham Bus Station’ is an unauthorised portrait, from photos taken riding the number 177 bus. It is an example of a single Peckham resident, and the severe mundanity of everyday life on the South East London buses.

WILLIAM JARVIS - makes paintings that are an homage to painting whilst simultaneously poking fun at it. They comply with the technique and finish of traditional Painting; they are photo-real and painted in oils with a luxurious enjoyment of the materiality of paint but the chosen subject matter is often obscure and overlooked; we are blinded to it by our feelings of disgust. His exhibition piece ‘One For My Homies’ is a nod to the misconceptions that are often associated with South London.

YURI PATTISON - is concerned with an exploration of people in space through the effect of resistance of the human body on three conflicting UHF television signals located within the gallery. The image of ‘Channel 21′ shift and blend on the screen as people negotiate the space the tv test patterns mix and alternate, which evokes parallels with art’s long relationship with utilitarian design. The piece is an investigation into the edge of signals and the competition at these boundaries.

BRADLEY ZERO PHILIP - took on the topic of laughter to examine an emotional response we immediately associate with joy but is also symptomatic of mental illness and psychosis. His work transmutes laughter into something else, flipping its meaning back and forth between two polar opposites. The ‘laughers’ on the video screens shift between the genuine and insincere creating a confusion between the group dynamic and solo experience. The confrontational installation of the screens is at odds with the voyeuristic gaze of the camera, further confusing the intentions of the piece and the motives of the performers.

JOHNNY PINCHARD - creates prints that are interested in an exploration of mourning for failed promises and the attempts that have been made at exodus. They are a stark reminder of the physical impossibility of complete escape. This series takes reference from the Peoples Temple Agricultural Project. This was the development of a socialist utopia in America and Georgetown, created as an alternative to the racist and prejudice climate of the 1960’s & 70’s. It ended with the tragic loss of 918 people that were led to commit ‘revolutionary’ suicide.

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// FROM TOP TO BOTTOM - HARRY BEER // BRADFORD BAHAMAS // YURI PATTISON // OFF MODERN LOGO // CHARLEWORTH, LEWANDOWSKI & MANN // TOM HARRAD // BEN FREEMAN //