CLEAVE 2019 artists' talks 2pm Saturday 15 June

Artists talks by Lisa Andrew, Karen Banks, Linden Braye,  Sue Callanan, WeiZen Ho and Margaret Roberts, followed by CLEAVE 2020 planning discussion for anyone interested in participating in some way.

CLEAVE 2019 is open 11-5pm Friday - Sunday until 23 June.

CLEAVE 2019 opened last night

Open Fri-Sun 11am-5pm to 23 June 2019 

Artists talks Saturday 15 June 2pm 

DOWNLOAD: ROOMSHEET

DOWNLOAD: ARTISTS ASK ARTISTS ABOUT THEIR WORK

CLEAVE shows the work of artists Lisa Andrew, Karen Banks, Linden Braye, Jenny Brown, Sue Callanan, Socorro Cifuentes, Ben Denham, Nola Farman, WeiZen Ho, Fiona Kemp/Virginia Hilyard, Jacek Przybyszewski and Margaret Roberts. 

Sue Callanan Rediscovering Cristina Iglesias (2019). Plasterboard. I first saw Cristina Iglesias’s work in the Guggenheim, NY in the late 90’s. The large concrete and tapestry works nestled into the architecture- hard edged on the outside, soft and domestic on the inside. I’ve created a mini version to insert itself into the architecture of Articulate- the outer plaster surface continuous with the plaster walls of the space; the inner walls, revealing  the exposed paper surface of the plasterboard, with their fragile scrapings mimicking the soft interiors of Iglesias’s work.

Linden Braye Igloo 2019 (fibreglass, perspex, metal, cotton string, copper wire, plastic)

Karen Banks  aAND, 2019 Video projection, 3.22min, yellow glass 25mm x 35mm
Single channel video work projected onto glass. Using hand-processed 16mm film that has been subjected to digital manipulation the video projection re-discovers the ‘hand’ as object within the context of Dora Maar’s Untitled, 1933-34 (shown left).  Following the contours of Maar’s photomontaged image, the video traces an unfolding into an unknown landscape; it is here the ‘hand’ negotiates containment and escape.

Front to back: Ben Denham, Margaret Roberts, Virginia Hilyard/Fiona Kemp, Lisa Andrew, Jacek Przybyszewski
Ben Denham HEAT DEATH: SOMETIMES MAKING SOMETHING LEADS TO NOTHING, REPRISE (2012), single channel video, 2:43 minutes. A remake of Sometimes Making Something Leads to Nothing by Francis Alÿs.

Margaret Roberts  Dance 2019 (floor, wood, scenic paint+shoe polish 240x90cm).  Dance enlarges Sophie Taeuber’s Vertical-Horizontal Composition, cuts it into its parts and locates them together on the floor, aiming to incorporate the actual place of dancing that Taeuber included implicitly in her painting.    margaretroberts.org

Nola Farman   The Hermit’s Tablecloth (Version 3)

A re-contextualization of a passage from Eugene Ionesco’s Le Solitaire concerning a peaceful, solitary life besieged by the politics and power struggles of others, which are ultimately  inescapable. 

Virginia Hilyard/FionaKemp   PARE, 2019     Single channel video

The work of Andrei Tarkovsky was the catalyst  to use a 360 camera on a recent residency in Russia. For Cleave we are specifically working with the sense of ‘a peeling’ - of one side from the other - a by-product of the 360 video spheres. While moving through a space as it is being filmed, the fabric of the environment is being peeled away. What is being filmed is the body of a house in decay.  http://www.virginiahilyard.com     http://fionakemp.com

Lisa Andrew HighWayWear, 2019  polyester, plastic and pineapple silk, Wooden stand, variable dimensions. Visitors are asked to please pick cloth up and wear it.

WeiZen Ho The Subtle Beings Installation, 2018  beams, hair, perspex

I am extending upon one of the elements to the The Subtle Beings project installed in 2018 at Articulate project space.  It was a response to the conversations and stories exchanged in the communion area next to the home of one of the female shamans from the ‘Rungus’ tribe in Sabah (Malaysian Borneo), where major possession rituals take place. I am reflecting on how the roof structure of the area we were sitting in would be raised several storeys higher during ritual ceremonies and a small platform would be built close to the roof area, enough for the female ritual-maker to conduct her invocation song and dance. It is also connected with the fact that the female maternal lineage has been disintegrating as daughters are less willing to take on the apprenticeship role. weizenho.com                                                                                              

Jacek Przybyszewski TearWalkingimages 2019 (paper, tape, table, floor, wall) Walk signifies for me movement, process or transformation from one meaning to another. What interests me the most is a process… “Not only the  result, but the road to it also, is a part of the truth. The investigation of truth must itself be true: true investigation of truth is unfolded truth, the disjunct members of which unite in the result.” (Eisenstein citing Marx). This work  follows other walking works (SkyWalk mirroring sculpture and WindowWalk photography collection from Factory49 Paris 2016, Walkwithrose interactive floor wooden pieces 2018 and Walkforrose, wall blue tape drawing 2018 at Articulate).

Jenny Brown The activists cave _ charting the historical critique of capitalism. 2019 (detail). Through tapestry titled Maladaptation, Jenny Brown traces the alienating effects of capitalism that sits in the world of activist-on-the-run, Bev Smiles now caught in Kaufman’s hyperreal ‘Adaptation.’

Jenny Brown The activists cave _ charting the historical critique of capitalism. 2019 (detail). Through tapestry titled Maladaptation, Jenny Brown traces the alienating effects of capitalism that sits in the world of activist-on-the-run, Bev Smiles now caught in Kaufman’s hyperreal ‘Adaptation.’

Socorro Cifuentes  Experiencing the World as Our Own (2018, 11'43") is a rearguard remix with different ideas and experiences of activists and intellectuals regarding storytelling, orality, listening, memory and justice. This remix work is thought of as a practice of listening to important political ideas/practices, and aims to recirculate and create relationships among them.

CLEAVE 2019 opens Friday 7 June 6-8pm

Open Fri-Sun 11am-5pm 8-23 June 2019 

Artists talks Saturday 15 June 2pm

DOWNLOAD: ROOMSHEET

DOWNLOAD: ARTISTS ASK ARTISTS ABOUT THEIR WORK

CLEAVE 2019 shows the work of artists Lisa Andrew, Karen Banks, Linden Braye, Jenny Brown, Sue Callanan, Socorro Cifuentes, Ben Denham, Nola Farman, WeiZen Ho, Fiona Kemp/Virginia Hilyard, Jacek Przybyszewski and Margaret Roberts. 

Articulate is organising CLEAVE to present works that rely on earlier artwork for their sense and construction—works that extend dialogues with artists that have come before, or that are types of appropriation, reiteration, quotation, copy, re-mix, re-make etc, methods of artmaking that are among the wide range now available to artists. 

We call it CLEAVE to emphasise a simultaneous attachment to and distinction from an earlier artwork, as Rex Butler may have meant when he wrote two decades ago: The appropriated copy is always both a destabilising recontextualisation of the original and a testament to its lasting power.(1)  

We are thinking of CLEAVE as an extension of our underlying interest in site-specific and other spatial art practices because appropriation and related practices also communicate content through their media and construction. We expect for example that site-specific works have the potential to revalue place by giving a work's actual location a role in its construction of meaning, and ask now if appropriation, re-makes, etc., also revalue the past, or reconstruct relationships with what remains of it, in a similar way.(2) 

We are planning the CLEAVE project in two parts, as a planning show in June 2019, that introduces another in mid 2020. We hope each will also have associated talk-events—as planning discussions, artists’ talks, and other contributions. By drawing in the experience and insights of artists with a range of experiences in this area, we hope that the first event will seed expanded activity in the second. 

(1) Rex Butler What is Appropriation? IMA and Power Publications 1996, p 37

(2) Drawing on the argument that the modern culture we are embedded in is characterised by the devaluation of both place and the past, in Anthony Giddens The Consequences of Modernity Stanford University Press 1990

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CLEAVE 2019 extends the definition of 'an artwork' to include traditional Chinese and SouthEast Asian possession rituals (WeiZen Ho), activist projects (Jenny Brown, Socorro Cifuentes), works of literature and film (Nola Farman, Fiona Kemp/Virginia Hilyard) as well as what is more conventionally understood as 'artworks' (Lisa Andrew, Karen Banks, Linden Braye, Sue Callanan, Ben Denham, Margaret Roberts) and the process of appropriating/re-mixing itself (Jacek Przybyszewski).  

Image: Cristina Iglesias, Sin Título  1991. Fibre cement and resin 2.5x. 2.2 x1.5 m
Sue Callanan is making a model of Cristina Iglesias' wall, Sin Título  1991.

Image: Meryl Streep as Bev Smiles in Maladaptation, previously Orlean in Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonze's film Adaptation (2002) . 

This two-part work called Maladaptation includes a tapestry where Jenny Brown traces the alienating effects of capitalism that begins with  Indigenous connection in a quote by academic Mary Graham: ‘I am located therefore I am.’  Successive tapestry panels track this increasing alienation through core world events that includes and extends Hannah Arendt’s discussion on this theme. The tapestry is further connected to corresponding laws and actions that have determined relationships with the environment, both protective and destructive. It sits in the world of activist-on-the-run, Bev Smiles now caught in Kaufman’s hyperreal ‘Adaptation.’

Image: Researcher activists Gladys Tzul Tzul and Boaventura de Sousa Santos, still from Socorro Cifuentes, 'Experiencing the World as Our Own' (2018, 11'43"), a rearguard remix with different ideas and experiences of activists and intellectuals regarding storytelling, orality, listening, memory and justice. Socorro's remix work is thought of as a practice of listening to important political ideas/practices, and aims to recirculate and create relationships among them.

Francis Alÿs Sometimes Making Something Leads to Nothing Video, 4:59 min (loop), color, sound 1997. Ben Denham includes a work titled  Heat Death: Sometimes Making Something Leads to Nothing, Reprise, inspired by Francis Alÿs' work.

Image: Dora Maar, Untitled 1933-34. 

Karen Banks plans to project a hand-processed 16mm film, which has been digitally manipulated, onto a pane of yellow glass. Re-covering the “hand”, a thematic image for Surrealist photographers, the video follows the contours of Dora Maar’s Untitled 1933-34 as it traces an unfolding into an unknown landscape.

Image above: Helio Oiticica Parangolés: www.reddit.com. Lisa Andrew plans to play with  the idea of Helio Oiticica Parangolés creating the potential for audience participation.

Above image: Mario Merz "Igloos" installation view at Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2018-2019. Courtesy: Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan. Foto: Renato Ghiazza © Mario Merz.  Linden Braye plans to remake a Merz igloo, perhaps in light of her interest in the western sun that enters Articulate.

Above image: andrei-tarkovsky.com. Fiona Kemp and Virginia Hilyard plan a single screen video and sound work based on 360 and gimbal video they shot in Kronstadt in Russia, referring to work of Andrei Tarkovsky. They are working with the sense of ‘peeling one side from the other' that occurs within the 360 video spheres. This is also reflected in the image itself - the interiors of an abandoned house - decay and dilapidation. They will develop an ambient soundtrack which will play into the space.

Jacek Przybyszewski  invites the audience to engage with processes of re-mixing

Jacek Przybyszewski: Walk signifies for me movement, process or transformation from one meaning to an other. So now what interest me the most is a process… “Not only the result, but the road to it also, is a part of the truth. The investigation of truth must itself be true: true investigation of truth is unfolded truth, the disjunct members of which unite in the result” (Eisenstein citing Marx). After few of my walking works (SkyWalk mirroring sculpture and WindowWalk photography collection from Factory49 Paris 2016, Walkwithrose interactive floor wooden pieces 2018 and Walkforrose wall blue tape drawing 2018 at Articulate), I propose today TearWalkingimages.

Nola Farman re-engages Eugene Ionesco's The Hermit for the second time:
see earlier engagement: https://inrelationto.weebly.com/nola-farman.html

Margaret Roberts plans to  remake  Sophie Taeuber Arp's Vertical-HorizontalComposition 1928 (above) through attempting to add space and reduce time. 

WeiZen Ho (from T h e  S u b t l e   B e i n g s  2018)

This installation is one of the elements to the ‘The Subtle Beings’ project and specifically a response to the conversations and stories in the communion area next to the home of one of the female shamans from the ‘Rungus’ tribe in Sabah (Malaysian Borneo), where major possession rituals take place. I am reflecting on how the roof structure of the area we were sitting in would be raised several storeys higher during ritual ceremonies and a small platform would be built close to the roof area, enough for the female ritual-maker to conduct her invocation song and dance. It is also connected with the fact that the female maternal lineage has been slowly disintegrating as daughters are less willing to take on the apprenticeship role. I used the memory fragmentation process of the stories and explanations, further fragmented as certain phrases were often translated from the Rungus language to the Malay language (which I can still thankfully understand) in considering this installation element. WeiZen Ho