Situation X

About

RICHARD BATEMAN, CHRISTOPHER BOND, MARCUS COPE, KERAN JAMES, DAVID MICHEAUD, JOHN HENRY NEWTON, DAVID SMALL, MIA TAYLOR, ELLY THOMAS opening Thurs 3 Dec 6-9 with a performance by FLETCHER BOOTE 7.45 4 December 2009 - 3 January 2010 studio1.1's Xmas extravaganza explores Situationism in we hope a suitably random way. Well aware that there can't be Situationist art as such, it's a contradiction in terms, we know too that, in Blake's ultra-visionary foreshadowing of Hegel ('without contraries there's no progression'), without contradictions there is just no dialectic. And in the years since the Situationists sought to define themselves and expel each other in terms of what and who they were NOT, there can't be a single artist who however mistakenly hasn't felt a Situationist sciatic twinge. (To further mis-quote, this time a fictional character ‘...it's the ‘Situation' that has grown small'.) Forty years ago Debord identified the image-making strategy of late capitalism: through the proliferation of spectacle life progressively becomes nothing but appearance. And once 'all that once was directly lived has become mere representation', where does that leave the artist? Because up to now that transposition has been the artist's job. Cancelling art's status as a separate, specialized activity and transforming it into part of the fabric of everyday life makes artists out of all of us: something ‘the artist' can find either fascinating or problematic. Straddling the New Year we bring together just for Christmas (not for life) a group of artists who can be defined at the very least as 'not NOT Situationist'. Paying no attention to our Situationist principles we will NOT be open during the Xmas week