SWOOSH.

About

PV:6-9PM - Thurs 3rd September

Curated by Matt Gee

|| Featuring ||
Chris Cawkwell
Steve Gee
Kosha Hussain
Giulia Zaniol

(The Rum Factory, Bow Arts, Unit 4 Pennington Street Warehouse, Pennington Street, London E1W 2BD)

Inputting ‘Swoosh’ into Google produces results predominantly populated by Nike ticks. We could suggest that ‘Swoosh’ is the most iconic and specifically descriptive word, in terms of branding. 
‘The Exhibition logo is a tribute to imitations using the same font as Nike, and the yellow matches the now shamed brand of Lance Armstrong. Brands can be so powerful as to take a position within language and vocabulary. 

Swoosh includes works that incorporate sensory branding within the Fine Art object. The purpose is to question and debate what motifs make people tick, or trigger certain connotations, and how branding has infiltrated and become synonymous within our landscape. They’re used as symbolism in artworks to convey how desire is created within society.

With Steven Gee’s 'A Photograph Of Flash and No Flash With The Companies Details Screen Printed On, In Exchange For 15 Meters Of Fabric'’ Gee suggested to screen print their information to advertise in exchange for free material. 
Market-leading brands become materiality, as they are more important than the product. Steven Gee references the digestion of an image, he uses high-vis material to reference ‘The Gaze of Orpheus’ by Maurice Blanchot who writes “the work only reveals itself by concealing itself in the work”, and the concealment is revealed in the night. He screen-prints a bottle of Listerine as a break or refreshment for the exhibition, some might say defining brand of the mouth wash industry with the use of Listerine as ink. 
The Swimwear market is led by Speedo; Matt Gee’s assemblage contains a segment of a recognisable float amalgamated with organic looking forms, leaving part of the logo clearly visible to conjure pollution metaphors.

Chris Cawkwell’s work is inspired by Dr Alan Hirsh’s study in to scent marketing (1991); introducing two odours to the games floor of the Las Vegas Hilton. 'The Smell of Money' takes 12 smells linked with such manipulative technology and periodically pumps them into the gallery space – the individual odours mixing, becoming overwhelmed and counteractive to their original purpose.

Kosha Hussain creates a performance installation, ‘Toys Will Be Toys’, marketing his forthcoming curatorial project. Hussain claims, “The installation’s obnoxious presence cannibalistically subverts the landscape of the exhibition, attempting to colonise the mind and space with its corporate hegemony.”

Giulia Zaniol raises questions whether celebrity artists, such as Tracey Emin have taken the practice of self-publicist to such high dimensions that they blur the boundaries between being a luxury branding, and Fine Art. This manifests with a parody triptych from her Brand Art Sensation series with a fictional brand label ‘Eminent’ alongside luxury recalling artworks in form of a silk scarf and fashion style photography.