UPCOMING EVENTS AND OPENINGS

1. 4 June 12pm, Contort Yourself: Works by Harold Offeh, Jan Hendrickse and David Blandy at Acme Project Space

2. 4 June 6pm, Mulberry Tree Press Event #4: Emma Hart at SE8

3. 5 June 1.30pm, Film Screenings as part of the exhibition CONTORT YOURSELF at the Rio Cinema

4. 6 June 2pm, Serpentine Cinema: CINACT Adria Julia and Samuel Stevens at the Gate

5. 10 June 7pm, Gallery Talk with Adam Pugh at Parasol Unit

6. 10 June 7pm, The Films of John Latham: EXPRMNTL at the Whitechapel Gallery

7. 11 June 10am, BREDA BEBAN: MY FUNERAL SONG at Camden Arts Centre

8. 11 June 6.30pm, Private View: Gossip, Scandal and Good Manners: Works by Ulises Carrión at the Showroom

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1. Contort Yourself: Works by Harold Offeh, Jan Hendrickse and David Blandy

Curated by the first year MA Curating Contemporary Art (Inspire), Royal College of Art                              

Private View: Thursday 3 June, 6.00 – 9.00pm  Exhibition: 4 June – 27 June, 2010                                                                                                              

Open Thurs - Sun, 12.00 - 6.00pm  

Contort Yourself brings together the work of three UK based artists who twist, stretch, and reappropriate notions of the construction of the self, through performance, digital video and sound. In exploring the theme of self-realisation, these works playfully critique processes of identity formation and re-formation. The title of the show is inspired by the 1979 underground punk rock classic of the same name by No Wave group James Chance and the Contortions, which imagines the body in an abstract space, where thought and matter become enmeshed. In borrowing this title, the exhibition alludes to multiple categorisations and the warping of cultural specificities.

In Alien Communication Harold Offeh (b. 1977) utilises a variety of lenses to distort his features, magnifying his eyes, lips and teeth to exaggerated proportions whilst referencing historical representations of the ‘other.’ Thus he interrogates the ever- contested site of the body, and latent or forgotten memory.

David Blandy (b. 1978) appropriates humour in The White and Black Minstrel to pose questions about the degree to which the self is formed through immersion in the culture of records, films and television. His clown-like white minstrel figure appropriates a sub- cultural formation and simultaneously explores the inverse of modes of popular cultural stereotyping.

Current Acme Tower Hamlets Studio residency holder Jan Hendrickse (b. 1966) makes work that exists across the boundaries of performance, improvisation, installation and socially engaged practice. Trained initially as a musician, Hendrickse's new commission, Self Portrait, is an interactive sound installation which examines notions of categorisation through visitor participation, making use of the telephone both as generator and transporter of immediate sound and as a self-referential object. Alongside these works additional research documentation offers fragments from the artists’ creative processes: sketches, notes, documents and supplementary material provide a rich frame of reference. The material questions and explores a multitude of influences within perceived spheres of national, popular and personal identities.

An accompanying series of events includes a panel talk discussion at the Acme Project Space on 16th June 2010, with Dr Anthony Downey, Professor Irit Rogoff and David Gryn, as well as the UK film premieres of Guest of Cindy Sherman and My Babushka on 5th June at Rio Cinema, Dalston. Additional information about talks and events held during the exhibition can be found on the following websites: http://www.contortyourself.org & http://www.acme.org.uk/projectspace.php.

Acme Project Space is located in the heart of East London's gallery district at 44 Bonner Road, Bethnal Green, London E2 9JS   Tube: Bethnal Green, Central Line Train: Cambridge Heath Buses: D3, D6, 8, 106, 253 & 309

For more information please visit http://www.acme.org.uk.

The exhibition is curated by the first year students on the MA Curating Contemporary Art (Inspire) Royal College of Art. It is a structured two-year course whereby students undertake a professional work placement at a leading contemporary visual arts institution in England alongside their studies. For press queries please contact Amanprit Sandhu or James Neil, amanprit.sandhu@network.rca.ac.uk; james.neil@network.rca.ac.uk.

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2. Mulberry Tree Press Event #4: Emma Hart

Mulberry Tree Press

EVENT # 4 - 4th June 6-9pm

EMMA HART PROJECTS THE FUTURE #1

The performance will start at 8.00pm and will last for approximately 20 minutes. Please note there will be no admittance 'during' the performance time, please arrive early to avoid disappointment.

Emma Hart has made a video that predicts the future. Emma Hart will project what happens next. Emma Hart’s practice is a course of action. Through video and performance she devises anarchic processes for the moving image, rethinking its mode of address and reception. The camera and projector are rejected as passive apparatus and become performative catalysts that inject uncertainty into the notion of original and copy. Based in London, Hart exhibits videos, installations and performs internationally. Her work has been presented at institutions including Tate Modern, Tate Britain, Camden Arts Centre, Battersea Arts Centre, Dundee Contemporary Art Centre and Cell Project Space. Hart also collaborates often with Benedict Drew and their work was part of Nought to Sixty at the ICA, Performa 2009, New York and recently shown at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art.

at SE8 - 171 Deptford High Street, London, SE8 3NU     

http://www.se8.org.uk

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3. Film Screenings as part of the exhibition CONTORT YOURSELF

1.30 – 4.45pm, Rio Cinema, Dalston

The first event in the programme will be film screenings of My Babushka (2001) and Guest of Cindy Sherman (2008), with an introduction by a guest film curator.

Both films selected deal with the exhibitions central theme of identity and notions of the self. They also explore wider issues of popular and cultural identity and how these affect notions of the self.

FILMS:

My Babushka: Searching Ukrainian Identities (15) (US 2001) Dir: Barbara Hammer. 52 min. Digital.

This story of the director’s personal journey in search of her ethnic roots, identity, and family history in Ukraine is set against an investigation of civil liberties and cultural difference in a society on the verge of opening itself to the world in the post-glasnost era. Visually compelling and politically incisive, Hammer’s portrait of a nation becomes a deeply personal and socially revelatory document.

Guest of Cindy Sherman (15) – UK PREMIER (US 2008) Dirs: Paul Hasegawa-Overacker & Tom Donahue. 88 min. Digital.

This film takes an eye-opening look at what happens when a sceptical outsider finds himself romantically involved with the ultimate insider. Filmed over 15 years and including interviews with a veritable who’s who of the art and entertainment world (including Ingrid Sischy, John Waters, Robert Longo, Carol Kane, David Furnish, Danny DeVito, and Molly Ringwald), the film paints a vivid picture of the New York art scene that is also a witty, illuminating look at celebrity, male anxiety, and art.

Price: £4, £3 concessions. For further information on film screening email: jareh.das@network.rca.ac.uk

Rio Cinema, 107 Kingsland High Street, London E8

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4. Serpentine Cinema: CINACT Adria Julia and Samuel Stevens

2pm

Screenings that focus on artists who experiment with the medium of cinema.

Presented in association with Sketch and Picturehouses.

The Gate, 87 Notting Hill Gate, London W11 3JZ

Tickets £6/5

Available from The Gate 08741 704 2058 http://www.picturehouses.co.uk

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5. Gallery Talk with Adam Pugh

7pm

An independent curator based in Norwich, Adam Pugh was previously Director of Aurora, an annual festival in Norwich which focused on artists who work with moving images. He will discuss the ability of animation to transcend the quotidian and literal, and its growing importance to artistic practice in the wider art world.

Tickets £5 / £3 concessions.

Parasol unit, 14 Wharf Road, London N1 7RW

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6. The Films of John Latham: EXPRMNTL

Thursday 10 June, 7pm

EXPRMNTL :

Jud Yakult, UK 1967, 20mins

Unedited Material from The Star, UK 1960, 12mins

Talk Mr Bard, UK 1961, 7mins

The films of this important British artist offer radical assaults – or redefinitions - of time and space, art and science, documentation and production. John Latham proposed as his avatars the three brothers from Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov a key literary referent for the artist. His film work is linked with the youngest brother, Alyosha, the most sympathetic of the three characters, whose role is to ameliorate and act as witness.

The abstract film Talk Mr Bard looks back to pioneering work of Len Lye or Tony Conrad and towards a counter-cultural psychedelia and Unedited Material From The Star is a time-lapse documentation of Latham’s changing book-painting Film Star. The films are shown with rare interviews and other documents and contextualised by guest speakers Anthony Hudek and Athanasios Velios, developers of the Latham Archive.

Tickets: £6/£4

Whitechapel Gallery, 77-82 Whitechapel High Street London E1 7QX

http://www.whitechapelgallery.org

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7. BREDA BEBAN: MY FUNERAL SONG

Jun 11 - Sep 5, 2010

A new film installation in Gallery 2 by London-based Serbian artist Breda Beban.

My Funeral Song is Breda Beban’s most recent work – a five-screen video installation that will be presented in Gallery 2 alongside an earlier series of films Little Songs To Cry To (2003) in the Reading Room. Each screen in My Funeral Song focuses on one of Beban’s close friends as they listen to the song they would like to have played at their funeral. The simplicity of each portrait heightens attention to subtle gestures and shifts in expression that chart an inner journey, through psychological states of remembering the past and envisioning a future in their absence.

Continuing her interest in use of sound as a narrative device, the project centres on the power of a well-loved song to compress an outlook on life into a telling moment that is at once emotional and thoughtful, melancholic and full of joy. Little Songs To Cry To were filmed spontaneously as ‘home-movies’.

These devoted observations of the people closest to Beban are tributes set against the backdrop of a specific soundtrack. Breda Beban was born in Serbia, raised in Macedonia and Croatia and is now based in London. Her work often invokes human experiences of relationships, observing how these are played out in the performance of life.

CAMDEN ARTS CENTRE             

Arkwright Rd, London, NW3 6DG Tel.: 020 7472 5500

http://www.camdenartscentre.org

info@camdenartscentre.org

Free admission.

Tue-Sun 10-6, Wed 10-9

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8. Gossip, Scandal and Good Manners: Works by Ulises Carrión

Private View Friday 11 June 2010, 6.30 – 8.30pm Exhibition continues 12 June - 26 June 2010

Gossip, Scandal and Good Manners is the first solo presentation in the UK of the work of Mexican artist, writer and publisher, Ulises Carrión (1941-1989), curated by the first year MA Curating Contemporary Art at the Royal College of Art in collaboration with Martha Hellion. Comprising an exhibition, series of events and publication, the project will invoke the spirit of Carrión’s practice through the activation of his provocative propositions and methodologies. 

Incorporating concrete and visual poetry, mail art, videos, sound works and ‘bookworks’, Carrión’s diverse practice focused on language as a raw material and the exploration of alternative forms of distribution and communication. Gossip, Scandal and Good Manners, the video work from which the exhibition takes its title, is built around marginal patterns of everyday information exchange, or gossip. 

Carrión’s practice emerged from literary and concrete poetry circles in Mexico before he moved to Europe in the mid-1960s, at which point his work also became associated with Fluxus. He promoted a transnational dialogue with his mail art projects and initiatives such as Other Books and So, active as a bookshop in Amsterdam (1975-1978) and subsequently as an archive. Apart from hosting exhibitions, performances and the making and publishing of artists’ books, the shop also functioned as an informal meeting point for artists and publishers. 

Informed by the structure of Other Books and So, The Showroom’s exhibition space will double as a flexible platform for performances, seminars, talks, screenings, and a display of the different elements of Carrión’s practice alongside rare archival material.  This material will be presented in a modular display system conceived by Fay Nicolson and Oliver Smith, which takes its inspiration from the cardboard vitrines designed by Martha Hellion for the Fluxshoe exhibition that toured the UK in the early 1970s. The display structure will also house a range of contemporary artist books that continue in the spirit of the ‘bookwork’, as well as re-editioned versions of Carrión's own ‘bookworks’ and contextual material on his practice. 

An accompanying publication designed by Fraser Muggeridge Studio will provide documentation of the exhibition project and events programme, together with newly commissioned texts setting Carrión’s work in context. This will be launched on Friday 2 July 2010 at KALEID Editions. 

The Showroom, 63 Penfold Street, London NW8 8PQ

Opening hours: Wednesday - Saturday, 12 - 6pm

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