Alpha

About

To every beginning, there precedes an end; with each new act, there is a nullification of what has past. The very notion of the beginning is the subject at play in 'Alpha' the new exhibition at the Lewisham Arthouse. 'Alpha' is an exhibition in four parts: Tom Butler, Saul Brennan, Vasillis Chamam and the art group neone. Exploring the contradictory nature of identity, binary opposition, the origin, and repetition. Through different mediums the exhibition 'Alpha' will express the turbulent nature of our language and use, meaning or construction within mark making, and the stability of which we take for granted in the everyday.

"… I like the notion of the particle accelerator. The fact that in order to reach such speeds (to ultimately discover something), particles have to go round in circles and return to the beginning again and again; again the phoenix. I say I won't go round and round but I will, it's inevitable…"

The notions of truth, universality, knowledge, are what drive Saul Brennan's paintings. But it is his constant doubt that causes friction within his approach. Alpha, each time I write it down, it feels like a lie. Tom Butler has realised notions of repetition and obsession through the traditional processes of pencil drawing and stone carving. Returning to the figure, he uses these traditional media to render the human form with a particular interest in the physical expression of emotion.

"…loose narratives, formed by a subverted kind of nostalgia, speak of their own mythical authors. Constructed by the ruins of a self deconstructed; Quasi-biographical and emotional fragments, debris, clichés and gossip put together anthropomorphic follies that gaze into the post-modern 'sublime'. At once fetishized and abject…"

Vasillis Chamam is exhibiting paintings and drawings featuring a young male character. They range from the non-specific and indefinite to a more direct self-portraiture. They are a mixture of heavily personal and sentimental notions, put together with the flippant and obnoxious. neone's work performs a regurgitation of the history of art to create nominal (re)cycles, creating the artificial resuscitation, within the body of art. Using continual references to the void and self-sustaining vortices.

"…between the rock and a hard place, we have fished out the very foundations of our rot, the stagnation of superficial surface and banal core. 'Alpha' in its beginning shall not decapitate the living dead, but breathe new life into the corpse of the phoenix, of our blood…"

The Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. The cycle of history, of style, of daily life, must begin somewhere.