Event detail
Alana Lake + Aza Shade + Bazooka + Charlie Billingham + Dominic from Luton + James Unsworth + Rckay Rax (performance)
An exhibition exploring contemporary consciousness.
“(…) a man is always a teller of tales, he sees everything that happens to him through them; and he tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story. But you have to choose: live or tell.” ― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea
“All the information I have about myself is from forged documents.” ― Vladimir Nabokov, Despair
Alana Lake (Curator) was born in Britain in 1981. She is an artist, curator and founder of Our Dark Chamber. Lake graduated from the Royal Academy of Arts, London in 2009. Lake has an international exhibitions record showing in London, Milan, Turin, Helsinki and Zurich.
Lake works predominately with photography and video, but extends into sculpture, text and installation and has been described by writer and theorist David Evans as being ‘after Tillmans’.
Aza Shade was born in 1989 in USSR, raised in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan and moved to London in 2006. Shade is a multidisciplinary artist having graduated from Central Saint Martins in Moving Image, working predominately but not exclusively with film, video and photography. Shade’s work will be on show at this-years Venice Biennale in the Central Asian Pavilion.
You could go so far as to say that Shade contributes to defining current trends in contemporary youth culture; working closely with Vice Magazine – Aza Shade is also lead singer of the experimental band Manflu.
Loulou and Kiki Picasso make up the small but powerful art collective Bazooka, known most notoriously for their editorial contribution to the French left-wing newspaper Libération.
Charlie Billingham was born in the UK in 1984 and currently lives and works in London. He studied Fine Art and History of Art at Edinburgh College of Art and the University of Edinburgh (2003-08) later undertaking post-graduate study at the Royal Academy of Arts, London (2010-13). Billinghams first solo exhibition was with Marcelle Joseph Projects in November 2012 and his next will be with Ceri Hand Gallery in November 2013. Billingham has exhibited with the Aubin Gallery, New End Art Gallery, The Royal Academy of Arts, R O O M and The Royal Scottish Academy.
Dominic from Luton (born Dominic Thomas Allan, Luton 1977) gives life eternal to taxidermed rats in bespoke sleeping bags (with AA Duracell’s), performs live in burnt-out wheelchairs as his own Father as Margaret ‘Milk Snatcher’ Thatcher complete with film set wigs, makes Union Jack sculpture out of chicken and chip boxes, en-masse, then destroys them inviting his Battersea dogs home Staffordshire bull terrier to join in, hand embroiders ‘WANKERS’ onto confectionary sweet bags, constructs edible heartthrob wreaths for the living and paints ‘D O M I N I C F R O M LU T O N’ onto Great Yarmouth piers out of season, bereft forever, of human activity.
Recent / current projects and awards include, \'Polemically Small\' curated by Edward Lucie Smith at Charlie Smith, London 2012, \'Shoes Off If You Love Luton!\' at Galleri Skilti (solo), Reykjavik, Iceland 2012, Arts Council England, Research and Development Award (individual) 2013, \'London Utd\' (curated) with Gavin Turk, Laura White, Peter lamb and Dominic from Luton, Kling & Bang, Reykjavik, Iceland 2013.
James Unsworth was born in Liverpool in 1979. He studied at Winchester School of Art and the Royal College of Art, London. He received his MA in Printmaking from the Royal College of Art in 2006. His work is in numerous collections, including public collections such as the Walker Art Gallery (National Museums Liverpool), the Royal College of Art and the UBS Art Collection.
Unsworth has earned a reputation for his wide-ranging practice that includes printmaking, drawing, photography and performance. He has held exhibitions at public and private institutions including the largest survey of his work so far at Raw Art, Tel-Aviv, Israel in 2011, in 2012 he directed his first performance; Shitheads/Ninja Turtle Sex Museum at Südpol, Luzern, Switzerland, his first solo exhibition at a Swiss institution. He has been included in exhibitions at Torrance Art Museum, Los Angeles, USA, the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Toronto, Canada and the Walker Art Gallery (National Museums Liverpool), Liverpool, UK.
Rckay Rax is a artist and performer currently living and working in London; a true testament to the contemporary avant-garde pushing the boundaries of what may be considered socially acceptable or palatable. Rckay Rax has undergone several name changes and continues to do so, questioning what a name and identity might actually mean or signify to an artist and their role as performer.
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