Nora Silva: Your Friendly Local

About

Your Friendly Local is an exhibition that will host continued non-time specific performances which will spread throughout the Chalton gallery, the Cock Tavern pub and the corner’s Off License shop. By confronting the ambiguities and expectations of each space with the work, the ideologies of the different spaces are confused, blurring the roles during decision making. If the performance is in the pub, does that turn everyone else into audience? Can I place a painting between crisps at the off license, and would I be able to buy it? Can I serve alcohol in the gallery but remove the talk, remove the social? Exploring the notion of durational aesthetics, the artist will design different actions to happen at certain times in the different contexts. 

Nora manufactures contexts and builds sculptural installations as a fiction from where to address political issues. She uses aesthetics through props for performances, often using gestures of irony, contradiction or frustration. The sculptures might shape the action and at times the action defines the sculpture. Defining political by its Greek etymology which refers to its collective sense: ‘the process of making uniform decisions applying to all members of a group’, her practice is intimately linked to the social.

Nora Silva (*1988) is a Spanish-Chilean artist based in London. Nora graduated in July from the Royal College of Art, and recent shows include Exchange of Spaces at the Camden Art Center, VR Exhibition at the ICA and Minced Meat for Lost Senses at Guest Projects. She also co-directs The Gramounce, an exhibition supper club, and MilesKm, an arts collective for the research of collaborative practices within the arts. She plays in a band called Coskeyass.