A group show by Leah Lovett, Charlie Billingham, Melis van den Berg & Adam Parkinson15-21 April 2010 (12-6pm) 12 VYNER STREET, LONDON, E2 9DG.nearest tube Bethnal Green, Buses to Hackney Central.
What is not but could be if, is a group show by four artists; Charlie Billingham, Leah Lovett, Melis van den Berg and Adam Parkinson, working in various disciplines from video and new media to painting, live art and sculpture. The work deals with the potentiallitty at the heart of each of their practices, be that a fictional narrative or proposed future.
In his most recent work Billingham has taken two of Seurat’s most famous works, ‘Bather’s at Asnières’ (1884) and ‘Sunday afternoon on the island of La Grande Jatte’ (1884-1886). The original paintings work as a pair, raising a number of serious socio-political issues, but now they can only be seen together in print. Billingham has created full size reproductions in exaggerated half-tone, the resultant lack of detail from this translation is evocative of the inability to see the originals as they were intended highlighting the poignant loose of meaning and context both images suffer.
Leah Lovett deploys the methods and conceits of the theatre to evoke the social interactions and distractions that are constructed in the urban realm. Inventing costumes, performances, films and installations, she works with other artists and individuals to translate and re-conceive experiences of the city. Lovett will be showing Pinned Landscape, a video triptych probing ideas of territory, myth, and cultural crossovers, made in, during and after her recent residency with Lab39 and Seoul Art Space, Korea.
Melis van den Berg’s work deals with issues revolving around the subjectivity of perception. Biological and artificial sensors shape and structure our daily lives. Every object radiates information in the form of light, sound and smell into space. Melis van den Berg is interested in picking up some of this information, and using it to create an image that might feel more alien than the source suggests.
Adam Parkinson’s work has been dealing with various aspects of time, working with pataphysical ideas of historical fact, attempting to play with our understanding of history as a ‘cause and effect’ linear system and use this as a means of expressing desires to predict and control the future. He has created a new sculpture for this exhibition, in response to the myth of the eternal return and the recurrent universe.
website: www.whatisnotbutcouldbeif.blogspot.com
