Banks Violette - (Repeater) Decay / Coma Mirror

Banks Violette - SunnO))) (Repeater) Decay / Coma Mirror

2006, Maureen Paley Gallery

Working with black metal band SunnO))) Banks Violette staged (Repeater) Decay / Coma Mirror at the Maureen Paley Gallery in 2006. Building a false wall inside the gallery behind which SunnO))) would play, the audience could hear the drone of the band whilst its members remained out of sight.

In the upstairs of the gallery Violette displayed SunnO)))'s equipment cast in salt and shards of a black coffin (from which the lead singer usually performs). These strange crystalline objects remain the only visual documentation of the event, whilst the band and much of Violettes practice remain in mystery. 

Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard - A Rock 'n' Roll Suicide

Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard A Rock 'n' Roll Suicide

Performance 1998

In 1998 Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard orchestrated a re-enactment of David Bowie's final performance as Ziggy Stardust. Staged at the ICA, London, on July 2nd and 3rd 1998 - exactly 25 years to the day from Bowie's 'farewell' performance as Ziggy - the British art duo pieced together the entire performance from documentary footage, first-hand accounts and bootlegged fan videos. Bowie was played by an actor sourced from several weeks of auditions, and backed by a band of accomplished musicians. Over the course of 2 hours he recreated the entire show move-for-move. More than a simple act of nostalgic recreation, the piece engages with the contemporary fixation for looking backward and really explores the notion of performance/audience relationship; a recurring theme in the artists' work.

Pil and Galia Kollectiv - Asparagus: A Horticultural Ballet

Pil and Galia Kollective - Asparagus: A Horticultural Ballet 

"Being knowledgeable about music sure isn't what it used to be, now that any kid can run a Google search, download on Soulseek and buy on eBay faster than you can say broadband. The elders of punk, who were there in the early days and pogoed all ten of them at the first Sex Pistols concert, those who lost their right arm at Woodstock only to find it ten hours later when the acid wore off - who needs them? It's only a matter of time before a giant iPod descends from the heavens and buries both them and their filthy record collections."

Often focusing and examining ideas that surround Modernism Pil and Galia's Kollectiv work in often absurd ways to disseminate its political, social and cultural implications. The Asparagus Ballet is an adaptation of a project of a 70's minimal synth band called xex, long since forgotten Pil and Galia have re-interpreted their movement through Bauhaus artist Oskar Schlemmer's Triadic Ballet. Whilst being loosely based on Waw Pierogi's experimental video and audio work structurally composed from the growth and branching patterns of the asparagus plant, Pil and Galia seek to explore how underground sub-genre's are continuously un-earthed.

David Blandy - Origins: Enter The Barefoot Lone Pilgrim

David Blandy Origins: Enter The Barefoot Lone Pilgrim

2007

David Blandy's Barefoot Lone Pilgrim gets the back-story treatment in a video work that spins its story through a mixture of original footage and elements appropriated from the artist's collection of soul records and kung-fu movies. A recurring character in Blandy's oeuvre the 'Pilgrim travels both the external world and the artist's internal terrain of interests, passions and influences in search of the soul.

Jamie Shovlin - Jesus Rinzoli's Hiker Meat.

Jamie Shovlin - Jesus Rinzoli's Hiker Meat.

Installation shot at iBid Projects, Feburary 2011 

Looking at the ephemera and historical legacy of 1970/80s horror films Jamie Shovlins 'Jesus Rinzoli's Hiker Meat' hosted at iBid projects was comprised of of 60 screens featuring 60 different loops of generic 'scene-types' found in the horror film genre. 

By collating over 1000 clips of found footage taken in the 1970/80s Shovlin explores the control an artist or director has over their works' intended message. With scene scripts, props and posters left around the space any potential narrative found in the installation remains vague and shifting, whilst we encounter very familiar horror type scenarios re-worked. 

Nicolas Provost - Long Live The New Flesh

Nicolas Provost Long Live The New Flesh (Trailer)

 Nicolas Provost Long Live The New Flesh (Clip)

A horror film spun together from clips of horror films with the distortion of digital compression used to create a blurring, smearing, merging and emerging mass of gore and violence. Belgian filmmaker Nicolas Provost both draws attention to the medium-specificity of digital video and defies it's logic by creating a visceral, fleshy and painterly outcome.

Adam Chodzko - Secretors

Adam Chodzko - Secretors 1993 - 1996

(Lead crystal, manifestation juice, plastic containers and acrylic)

The 'Secretors' are based on moments in horror films where buildings are seen to leak blood. Both terrifying and beautiful they suggest moments when social space becomes not only a volume for bodies, but becomes a body itself.

Each 'Secretor' is titled in 1000's of km/hr suggesting that in order to be seen the must be frozen in time and have been seen in various circumstances such as behind Gordon Brown in an interview on ITV, News at Ten (27th July, 1994). They acts as a metaphor of how alternative realities leak into the everyday familiarity of being, and ask that we change our normative perception of our surrounding environment. Coming in part of a 'kit', the 'Secretor' is a clear lead crystal vessel which you can fill with its individual 'manifestation juice', as a prop or an addition to an architecture they act as a reminder of constant transformation and instability. 

(Installation view at Tate St Ives, 'Dark Monarch')