6 May – 13 June 2009 Private View(s):Fri. 1 May, 6-8pm in LONDON Sat. 9 May, 7-9pm in LOS ANGELES
CRISP LONDON LOS ANGELES presents the UK/US solo debut of London-based artist, JESSE ASH.
Ash examines the conventions and values of looking, perceiving and understanding. For concurrent exhibitions in London and Los Angeles, Ash will present new work using the conventions of the gallery as a strategy to mirror ideas of screening, editing and revealing information. For example, the exhibition includes a bi-continental postal exchange of the gallery’s local newspapers, The West End Extra (London), and The Culver City Observer (Los Angeles). Using drawing, film, fiction and collaged daily newspapers, Ash questions socio-political paradigms, traditions of reportage and art historical orthodoxies.
In contrast to traditional forms of collage – where the juxtaposition of contrasting sources is primary – his collage work uses multiple versions of the original image to subvert the composition. Here, the image erases itself, and the intricate process is only revealed after a closer look. The intention is to present images that do not initially seem doctored so that the first experience is concerned with the content. Through further scrutiny, the process and its material form is revealed. Disparate to collage – where process is often dominant – this very contrast between content, form and transmission is obscured.
Ash’s written research focuses on the political significance of gossip and rumor, as well as investigating examples of non-verbal communication such as gesture. For the gallery publication, Ash chose to be interviewed by a BBC Radio news journalist on the London Eye, subverting the artist’s interview from a truth-bearing sermon, to an event of spectacle and irreverence – suggesting that honesty is neither possible or necessarily desirable to help our understanding of the world around us.
Andy Fagg: When you say construction, do you mean where it’s coming from politically?
Jesse Ash: Yes, its editorial nature. How these things are put together after you speak. We’re speaking now, but this will be edited I imagine, cut up and reformed. That post-production process interests me as much as what is said live.
AF: So, a lot of your work takes newspapers, you cut them up, re-form them. Now you’re talking about interviews and you’re talking quite authoritatively about what reporters do, and you’re critiquing them. Is this media studies?
JA: This is the study of media because that’s its subject. But its what I end up with and what my aims are which is different. I work visually to try to propose questions that hopefully induce a more critically aware relationship with institutions like the media, rather than understanding it academically or historically. The associations and relationships between what we’re doing here on the Eye and other pieces of work which may be seen as more traditionally minded ‘art works’ like collage or drawing hopefully add other dimensions to the work as a whole, its just another medium or another way in. It’s about bringing the form of the construction of information to the forefront, and when I say that, I mean… your role: you gather, order, record, and then re-present information. In a way this is what I do with my collage work.
-Excerpt from a conversation between the artist and Andy Fagg, BBC reporter, March 2009.
The artist and CRISP would like to thank:
Andy Fagg, Andy Dawson, Maxwell Attenborough, Martin Qesku, Stella Capes, Tom Woolner, Lucy Capes, Sarah May, Amy Ash and Ben Hadley
JESSE ASH received an MFA from the Royal College of Art, 2003, and is currently a PhD candidate in Fine Art at Goldsmiths, 2009. Recent group exhibitions include Bury Museum, UK (forthcoming), Limoncello, London (2008), Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York (2007), International 3, Manchester (2007) and The Showroom, London (2007). In 2003, he participated in the Jerwood Drawing Prize, UK and the New Wight Biennial at UCLA, Los Angeles.
