The Third Policeman is proud to present it’s inaugural exhibition: The Place Where He Is Meant To Be Lost. The show takes its title from a quote from Town Of Cats, a short story by Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami. It uses his ideas as a springboard to open up a space for artworks that inhabit a solidly contemporary, Murakami-esque zone between the real and the magical, the prosaic and the dreamlike, the deeply personal and the political.
Image: Still from Maia Conran This island, and its buildings, is our private paradise (2015)
The show includes UK and US artists who explore gaps and slippages in a range of media – some who work closely with language, sound and performance as well as those whose practices strike an otherworldly chord in a purely visual way.
The sculptural works of emerging NYC-based artist Christopher Aque and paintings by London-based Anna Ilsley interrogate notions of the erotic and the desirous gaze in contemporary culture. Aque uses the language of the readymade to his own contemplative ends, producing objects that are full to the brim with a surplus of desire and information, whether aspirational or erotic. The unabashed women in Ilsley’s exuberantly-wrought paintings are a reaction to the ways feminine desire is typically portrayed in the mass media. “Humping trees and showing off their willies and balls are attempts to divert standard power plays within the classical gaze,” she says.
British artist Maia Conran’s installation deals explicitly in the place between provisionality and possibility. Conran also uses performance, YouTube and constructed footage and text to provide iterations of her central motif – the island – blurring the boundaries between the scripted and the improvised. Artist and writer Patrick Coyle’s spoken performances and readings also inhabit and revel in gaps, often taking the form of a show-specific ‘guided tour’. Coyle often uses errors of speech or mishearings as raw materials – here, his performance and related sculpture (made in situ) pull and prod at elements of the Murakami story that inspired the exhibition as well as the eponymous novel of the gallery’s name.
The works of NYC artist Jack Henry and London-based Tanya Moulson take us on journeys into strange, otherworldly places that touch on the romantic sublime – drawn from their individual imaginations and sets of cultural references. Henry uses torn cardboard surfaces as material starting points for his series of delicately-rendered, collaged drawings, and the resulting rocky scenes are at once irrepressibly American and bewitchingly other. Moulson’s film and photographic works occupy odd spaces between. Populated by characters from Medusa to Willy Wonka in heady combinations of found and made footage, she takes the viewer on a tumble through serenity and terror, the rational and the irrational.
Christopher Aque / Maia Conran / Patrick Coyle / Jack Henry / Anna Ilsley / Tanya Moulson
Opening reception: Friday 4th March: Who wants a tickle? 6 – 9pm
Performances by Patrick Coyle and Maia Conran at intervals throughout Exhibition runs through 17 April
www.thethirdpoliceman.space
THE THIRD POLICEMAN 1535 DECATUR ST. NEW YORK, NY 11385
Christopher Aque (b. 1987, Chicago) lives and works in New York City. He attended the University of Chicago, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and graduates from Hunter College in 2016. Aque has had solo shows at PEREGRINEPROGRAM, Chicago (2012) and Regards, Chicago (2015), and has also been included in group exhibitions at Laurel Gitlen, New York; The Suburban, Oak Park, IL; and Regards, Chicago, among others.
Maia Conran (b. 1977, Bangor, UK) graduated from the University of West of England, Bristol in 2010 and lives and works in London. She has had solo exhibitions at Kingsgate Studios, London; Grand Union, Birmingham, UK; and Phoenix Gallery, Exeter, UK and has also been selected for international group exhibitions and screenings. Her work was published on DVD by Filmarmalade in 2012 and was the subject of a monograph entitled Here is the Yard published by Grand Union in 2014.
Patrick Coyle (b. 1983, Hull, UK) is an artist and writer. A graduate of the MFA Art Writing program at Goldsmiths, he has recently produced performances at Tate Modern; Catalyst Arts, Belfast, Northern Ireland; ICA London; Nottingham Contemporary and the Van Alen Institute, New York. Coyle is currently completing a residency at The Hub, Wellcome Collection, London.
Jack Henry (b. 1984, Flint, Michigan) lives and works in New York City. He graduated from Florida Atlantic University and the MFA Sculpture program at the University of Maryland in 2010. Henry has exhibited across the country, with recent solo and group shows including: Jack Henry and Patrick Berran at Storefront Bushwick, Brooklyn; Chronicles In Wait at the Buggy Factory, Brooklyn; Space : Face at Idio Gallery, Brooklyn and Last Daze at Space Gallery, Portland, Maine.
Anna Ilsley (b. 1982, Hitchen, UK) graduated from London’s Royal Drawing School in 2011, and lives and works in London. Solo and group shows include: Mark Wallinger Presents, Bermondsey Space, London; Temple of Lusts, S-T-O-R-E, London; Bloomberg New Contemporaries, ICA, London; and Creative Cities at the Barbican Centre, London and Beijing Capital Museum, China. Ilsley was also artist-in-residence at the British School at Athens, Greece, in 2013.
Tanya Moulson (b. 1984, Cardigan, UK) graduated from the MFA Photography program at the Royal College of Art, London, in 2015 and the University of Wales, Newport in 2006. Recent shows include: RCA Final Show, Dyson House, London; Wunderland II at Tactile Bosch Gallery, Cardiff, UK; and Exit Strategies, Filet Filet, London. She was also the recipient of the Michael Hoppen Scholarship at the Royal College of Art in 2013. Moulson lives and works in London.
Christopher Aque / Maia Conran / Patrick Coyle / Jack Henry / Anna Ilsley / Tanya Moulson
Opening reception: Friday 4th March: Who wants a tickle? 6 – 9pm
Performances by Patrick Coyle and Maia Conran at intervals throughout Exhibition runs through 17 April
www.thethirdpoliceman.space
