Revenge of the Killjoys

About

Paintings with a speculative desire to stir up meaning made by two ritual pop-song singers. Both artists navigated a pre-internet media vortex and are evangelistic in their conviction to an absurdist aesthetic lure.The LP as The Middle People emerged in a trance lyric exchange over the Summer of 2024. Joyfully begging each other on, they continue to grapple with the uncanny nature of the material’s possible meanings. 

Among new paintings a collaborative video for Rush Hour in the Studio reduces an absurdist lyrical approach to colour saturated bare bones. A precis of the Album will be performed at the opening and this will play throughout the exhibition.

Antonio formed ironic techo-pop group Reporter Estrábico in the 1980s, inspired by psychedelia and the visual language of Pop art. Like Mikey, calculated nonsense pervades his practice and polysemy marks images and the short texts that can accompany them. Mikey, who formed the art-pop-happening David Devant and his Spirit Wife, is also an academic and known for deranged keynote presentations. Both artists place their work in a personal context of improvised commitment to the contingent. They consider their frontman status to be an accident. Mikey has been deaf all his life and speculates that disability has shaped a passion for materials as carriers for meaning and assemblages of affective proximity.

Revenge of the Killjoys is the debut LP from The Middle People, Mikey Georgeson and António Olaio - artists with an uncanny connection - entangled by a shared pleasure of the uncanny. They are based on the same timeline, Antonio in Coimbra, Portugal and Mikey in West Sussex, England. Their’s is the pleasurable sound of the abyss in a haunted bluetooth hearing-aid. They met by chance at Antonio’s When You Awake You Will Remember Nothing, Courtyard Theatre, Hackney. António Olaio has established an unparalleled presence in the context of the Portuguese visual arts and Mikey has recently taken his ritual spaces to LA (AC institute) and Athens (Platforms Projects). By virtue of their multi-disciplinary approaches, they are forerunners in performative areas where visuality, sound, poetry and voice intersect in an idiosyncratic creative dynamic.

Preview 6 Feb from 6pm

Artists Q&A hosted by Richard Strange, Saturday 8 Feb from 7 pm