 |
 |
| Chris Dennis. Sorry Christopher. 2021 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| It's not black and white. Chris Dennis . 2021. 38x53cm |
 |
 |
 |
| Sorry. Chris Dennis . 2021. 38x53cm |
 |
 |
 |
| Artists Antonio Franchetti (L), Francesco Battistello (R). |
 |
| Portal, Anonymous (1973) |
This July, spontaneous art Happenings will take place in
over 30 locations around the globe.
In the spirit of the golden age of happenings, these spontaneous works will erupt and be led entirely by you, the participants.
At this time the Happenings themselves are a secret that
will be revealed on the day.
It is totally free and you can expect the happening to last
about an hour.
These new ‘Joy Sandwich’ Happenings will
wrestle once again with recurring themes in Semple’s work - ideas of
technological isolation, physical community, connection and the impact of art
on societal mental health.
With several communities around the world still failing to
reconnect after covid the artist hopes that these Happenings might be a small
way to bridge the gap between our connected digital lives and the real
world.
Stuart Semple is a multi-disciplinary British artist, who
over the last 25 years has presented several performances and Happenings
including his HappyCloud work where artificially generated eco clouds in the
shape of smileys are released into the sky. First released from outside Tate
Modern in London, the work has been presented by Hong Kong Arts Center, Denver
Art Museum and The Whitworth. Cities including Dublin, Toronto and Moscow have
hosted the work.
Pre-Pandemic Semple’s ‘Hug Huddle’, took place at London’s
tower bridge where strangers embraced one another. His ‘Emotional Baggage
Drop’, took residence at Denver’s Union Station - where passersby could confide
an emotional burden in a stranger, in a structure akin to a catholic
confessional. Semple’s ‘Jump’ for Federation Square in Melbourne gave the
simple instruction to the public to play on a giant inflatable white platform.
Whilst ‘Something Else’ took in the entirety of London’s Dulwich Picture
Gallery last summer, with a series of participatory happenings woven through a
complex set of installations and performances.
He is perhaps best known for his online performance project
around the Blackest Black and Pinkest Pink paints, where he famously banned
fellow artist Anish Kapoor from using them, before disseminating multiples of
them to hundreds of thousands of artists on the condition that they confirmed
they “were not Anish Kapoor, or associated with him”.
Speaking of ‘Joy Sandwich’, Stuart Semple explains: “We are at a time of hyper-communication, where we are in touch globally like never before. At the same time, I feel our digital bonds have atomized us. I’ve always been into happenings, and the way the seemingly spontaneous can transform everyday life and people into art.Art has become so loaded, so complicated. Bizarre in its cannibalism by commerce. I hope, more than anything that these works create memories for those that participate, and maybe an idea that people coming together is art in its own right”.
S.o.t.D.P.
OPENING 3 JUNE 2023, 18h
OPEN 4, 10 & 11 June 2023, 13h - 18h
Over the past two years, Dilum Coppens retreated to his studio and desublimed the different aspects of his artistic practice. “S.o.t.D.P.” is the result of this reflective period, an exhibition that combines paintings, sculpture, video, and a new experiment with virtual reality into a comprehensive installation.
To shape his research, he returned to the idea of an artefact: a historical object with a mystical or unknown meaning. This time he focused specifically on religious artefacts and the way they give an aura to prophets and the beliefs they give shape to.
“S.o.t.D.P.” visualizes the history and legacy of a fictitious prophet. Structured like a fragmentary vision, the works mimic the mysterious and equivocal cluster of meaning that archaeological artefacts and religious imagery contain. Dilum acts like an oracle delivering a message and failing to reach a coherent conclusion, and instead lapsing into a strange phase transition of narrative elements. The use of different media within this project reinforces the collage elements present in the individual works, connecting form and content. They are structured as visual riddles, laden with a playful mysticism, becoming a line of transmission for a meaning that the artist doesn’t quite grasp himself.
Dilum has always been an avid fan of fantasy novels and games. Both these cultural forms are heavily indebted to mythology and how it constructs meaning through narrative. Our ancestors created myths to explain the inexplicable and indeterminate world they were surrounded by. In that sense myths, games, fantasy novels and films offer a kind of escapism, by teasing out a sense of wonder that has largely been lost in our contemporary understanding of the world. Yet this sense of wonder still manifests itself in the gap that continues to exist between mystery and definition, between definite knowledge and bewilderment, and allows us a certain freedom. Coppens tries to recreate this sense of indeterminacy in his works, creating an archaeology of our own age.
Marx referred to religion as opium for the people, and perhaps myths used to serve the same purpose. The instability and inadequacy of meaning as a concept is expressed visually by this disjointed mixture of different media. Consequently, it shows the futility of this human attempt to impose something comforting on the bewildering world around us. Meaning is unreliable in the end. It is the stories human beings cannot help but invent: are they in any way helpful other than in the sense that an illusion is helpful and meaningful as some sort of opium?. Text from: K.L.8
Unable to maintain a polite distance, they will jostle for space, chatter amongst themselves and vie for attention; transforming the gallery into a collective collage of some of the best examples of contemporary analogue collage.
Participating artists: HP Heinz (UK), Michelle Granville (IE), Charlotte Callens (BE), Tetiana Dudka (UA), Ottavia Marchiori(IT), Ruxandra Niculae (RO), Mariángela Abbruzzese (VE), Olga Gvindzhyliya (PT), Delinconnue (RO), Mallie Hellström(DE), Yuliia Lukianova (UA), Zuza Rozanska (DE), Paris Triantafilou (US), Sophie Fourneau (BE), Vira Dutchyn (UA), Karin Vyncke (BE), Christel Marchal (BE), Jessica Russo Scherr (US).
