Concept

Curated by Diana Ali

d o u . b l e . l i v e s

d u p . l e . t r i a ls

A Visual Arts Exhibition at The Malt Cross, Nottingham.

www.maltcross.com

16 St. James Street, Nottingham, NG1 6FG.

12th-25th February 2011

Private View 11th February 2011 630pm-late

Monday- Saturday 11am-6pm.






A ‘double life’ conventionally is a life of two identities where one is simultaneously involved in two sets of circumstances and retains the secrecy of one from the other.

The exhibition is an exploration of the two sets exposing dichotomies of fiction and reality, mirror images and opposing forces. ‘Double lives’ cater for a parallel existence whether it portrays deceiving acts or insatiable fulfillment and can as subtle as a pen name or as exaggerated as the secret identity of a super hero; ultimately why are they adopted?

Rene Descartes and Gilbert Ryle both contest from separate perspectives that our biographies- mind and body- are divided but co-exist in parallel without being the same entity.

Artists have been invited to expose their work investigating functions of duality, such as alter egos, multiple personalities, parallel universes, secret relationships but where double lives exist, privately or publicly.

With thanks to Russell Slack.

Inma Herrera (Spain)


Espectáculo_soledad con espectador sobre teatro de papel
(Show_loneliness with spectator on paper theatre)

My investigation walks around the idea of a double existence (even triple) refered to the same person. Inside and privacy images are presented like a spectacle due to serve to exteriority. The show is focused on self- contemplation in order to find out where is the other that we all keep inside. The spectacle suggests how self theraphy plays an important role on our life.

Shona Davies , David Monaghan and Jon Klein (UK)


Away From the Light.

Size: 61 cm x 46 cm x 40 cm, Materials: Mixed media & found adapted objects
Animated film installation, looped animation 3 minutes 40 seconds.

Away from the Light creates a miniature environment that, while being an imaginary space, exploits the potential sense of unease generated through the familiarity of the scene. The viewer is positioned as an illicit voyeur observing this enclosed world which explores notions of the double life; what we choose to share and the internal world of the mundane, fantasies, despair and dark humour. The protagonist’s inability to influence events is contrasted with his final act.

Todd Fuller (Sydney, Australia)


Burrow

Duration: 3 minutes 39 seconds.
Chalk, charcoal and acrylic animation on canvas and found paper animation.

The guises we adopt, the characters we assume, the lies we keep, the persona's we gain comfort in, can all be liberating, they can offer solitude and sanctuary, but they can also cause be isolating or the cause of great loss. This is my story, my double life.

Deena DeNaro (UK)


Reverse the Wave.

With the advent of 2.0 technologies, hyper-pervasive media has blurred fact & opinion, eroded verification, and obscured marketing messages.

REVERSE THE WAVE is a subvertisement that mimics the look and feel of an advert- creating a cognitive dissonance and promoting the classic 'double-take' as viewers suddenly realize they have been duped.

Originally created to protest Nokia's brief in the MoFilm Cannes TV Advertising awards, RTW offers "Brand Identity Correction" for a corporation who not only puts profits above privacy and basic human rights, but also attempts to enlist others in their white-washing efforts through crowd-sourcing events such as competitions like these.

Jef Bourgeau (United States)


Stig Eklund

In his art, Jef Bourgeau explores cultural icons and trends, exquisitely veiling his own identity behind style, various media and invented doppelgangers. His refined use of light and shadow lends itself well to themes of mystery, loss and solitude. Nearly all the subjects of Jef Bourgeau's work are creations marked by projections of longing and desire. In each is his translation of and compassion for one of the most difficult and complex aspects of human reality: the constant discrepancy between our perception of and hope for truth, and our experience of it.

Jef Bourgeau (1950) lives and works in Detroit. His art has exhibited across the USA, Europe and Asia, and he is represented in important private and museum collections globally.

Stig Eklund was born in Bergen, Norway in 1976.

An undiagnosed dyslexic, Stig Eklund left secondary education at the age of sixteen. He spent his remaining teen years working at a cardboard factory in his home town. During that time, utilizing the materials at hand, he began to make and experiment with several pinhole cameras. The work from these rudimentary cameras developed into dark, moody photographs. He has remarked that he can only see "right" through a camera lens.

Eklund's mature camera style is so strong that it can even shroud a street lamp, so that, instead of light, it seemingly emits darkness and shadows. His vision drapes geometrically clashing urban beauty with the sooty persona of its denizens, succinctly captured by a Norwegian artist who spends much of the year in Detroit's glowering twilight.

Lemeh 42 (Italy)


Wool and Water.

Animation. Duration: 3:21

We are profoundly interested in representation problems and in the organization of space and time structures.
We are researching through video on the possible transformations of the classic narrative structure and on the multiple ways of telling stories. Our research finds inspiration into science, art, figurative painting and avant-garde literature.
Our images and excerpts are always shown into an intellectual context that the audience must discover. The context differs in each of our work, on the basis of different organization principles of the work of art. The world of expression assumes a precise form in our work. We start from an idea, a rare and high idea that evolves into something fantastic. Fantastic does not necessarily mean folkloric, but a sophisticated intellectual adventure with philosophical and metaphysical ambitions. The worlds represented in our stories have nothing to do with everyday life. They are like alternative worlds with their own rules, rigid and mysterious at the same time. This is the reason why the symbols that we prefer are images reflected in a mirror game. Our game is a mind game, our narration never gives the impression of the pure intellectual divertissement; instead, each work is a conceptual effort, a “high” vision of the world different from the world that we know, in order to amplify as much as possible our intellectual capabilities.

Fabienne Jenny Jacquet (London, UK)


Fashion & Make a Wish.

My work has a surreal and often nightmarish feel that is both seductive and horrifying. It has strong references to music, films, advertising and the media in general and explores sex, violence, pornography, religion and greed. Outside the world of visual art, I am inspired by people such as film makers Tim Burton and Vincent Gallo.

Shaeron Caton-Rose (UK)


Extra Mary.
Book III of EverAfter

Artist’s book (paper cuts, silkscreen) and soundtrack
Book measures 300 x 300mm
Track lasts approx 3 minutes to be repeated

ExtraMary is part of the project EverAfter, three artist’s books with soundtracks exploring the disparity and similarity between ideals and experience. The piece plays on the duplicate and opposite; using black and white cut and foldouts to reveal hidden imagery with second meanings. Dichotomy is achieved by contrasting the fairy tale based on the woman’s life with the story as told by her.

shaeroncr@virginmedia.com

Jean Harlow (UK)


Dark Matters.

Underlying geometry represents non-tangible theoretical reasoning aspects of human thought. This base layer forms a ‘field’ where intricate designs of an organic nature flow continuously in two or three-dimensions or both. These designs represent the duality of visible matter and unseen dark matter interacting to create illusions of reality.

Size 24 15x 15cm squares of MDF with ink drawings. (Six squares are fused as one piece forming a 30 x 45cm unit, four pieces are made from three fused squares 15 x 45 cm, whilst there are six single 15 x 15 cm squares.) The curator is to decide how to arrange on site.

Contact jeanharlowartist@hotmail.com

Delpha Hudson


HER-IT
60x50cm, bitumen on gessoed canvas.

What concerns me are ideas; philosophical, psychological, practical, non-sensical...art is not just visual . I believe that art can change not just how and what we see, but what we understand.
Art is a collection of ideas, written, enacted, presented to all of the senses. I am interested in the possibility of re-representing ‘female’, and the people she can be.

Jack Hutchinson (UK)


Brief Encounter.
2009-ongoing

Mixed media, Dimensions variable, Courtesy the artist

Brief Encounter invites the viewer to question notions of truth and falsehood. Meticulously detailed drawings, narrative texts, objects and video constitute a coherent representation of the fictional story of a long lost artist/explorer. The work represents an archaeological mission of particular relevance today – the present en route towards the past, in search of its own history.

Website: http://on.fb.me/fD0K6G
Twitter: @JackJHutchinson

Credits
Jack Hutchinson, b. 1982, Leicester

Another Artist (Sydney, Australia)


The Donor's Gift.

Donors Gift (2010) exposes the idea of giving and receiving within the context of a public institution displacing Derrida’s criteria for a free gift in relation to the function of the art museum and its benefactors. The work looks deeper into the psychological nature of this reciprocity. Jacque Derrida suggests that the notion of the gift contains an implicit demand upon the giver and the receiver. The exchange becomes an imposition for the receiver, and evenly becomes an opportunity to take from the giver.

Donors Gift questions the intentions of the giver giving for any other reason than to receive acknowledgement from the institution. The work lays out the formula that can be followed by any institution creating the individual act of giving as a marginalised and gratuitous act, by taking away the act of glorification.

William Brovelli (New York)


Coil Contract.

8 page framed Coil Contract: 18.5” x 16” and Bound surrogate object (content undisclosed) 5” H 2.5” D x 2.5” W

The Coil contract is a written agreement between the artist and the collector that takes ownership to the extreme by binding the owner to the piece until his/her death. Upon the death of the owner the art object is to be returned to full ownership of the artist or the artist’s estate to be destroyed.

www.williambrovelli.com

Gillian Duffy (UK)


'Nigella'
2007, Mixed-media, Dimensions Variable.

Made from the stripped-down body of an old electric hand mixer, her whisks replaced by tassels, Nigella stands on a flocked base poised for action. The work suggests the possibility of an object taking on a life of its own, but also references sexual fantasy as a form of escapism from the daily routine.

Jonathan Ford


For a while now.
I have been leading a double life.
As a dead rocket scientist.
Encased in my library.
Communication filtered through pages.
Words washed clean through.
To reveal the code.

Night and day.
Secretly talking to dead birds.
Black and white.
Life and death.
Pied.

In my library.
There is no horizon.
Only rockets rise to greet the dawn.
I await your questions.
Blessed forever to be.
The conduit.
Between the birds.
And you.

A dot waiting for a dash
Waiting for a Pied Wagtail.
To tap.

Chiho Iwase (London, UK)


Small People
2010
Installation (4 x 3 x 9 cm each figure, Resin

My practice is motivated by the remains of my childhood fantasy and my work shows childish parts of my mind which is repressed but sometimes uncontrollably comes out because of depression. There could be hidden personalities in my mind creating an important element of my character. At the same time, they frighten me and make me feel insecure.

info@chihoiwase.com

Sarah Buckius (US)


Everyday Absurdities
Video montage, 2010

These absurdist, Sisyphean video montages depict impossible sculptures constructed with elements of the human form in everyday spaces. These vignettes create a metaphor for those situations in everyday life that sometimes seem out of our control. Dark humor suggests the contradictions between a life filled with both structure and chaos.

Stuart Alexander (UK)


[sic]

A view once obscured or blocked is replaced by an inward view, and so the exterior landscape is replaced with an inner personal or reflective landscape. What is happening in these images comes to exist mostly in the viewer’s mind, relating to the fragile nature of what is “real”, the construction of a personal identity and a projection of this identity onto the image’s subjects.

Gemma Cumming (UK)


Greetings from the Mantlepiece. 2010.
Mixed Media Installation including paintings, steel and wood props
(dimensions variable)
With thanks to: "John Peacock Precision Engineering Ltd, Hurst, Berkshire"

Gemma's giant postcard paintings expose the falseness of the touristic image. Scenes taken on sunny days have their skies replaced with ominous sometimes almost apocalyptic skies. Which view is real, the image presented to us, the sky, the scene around it or are they all somehow valid at the same time?

gemma@gemmacumming.com