Stanley Picker Gallery

Public Event Saturday 25 June, 2-4pm

Former Stanley Picker Fellow Martin Westwood presents Re-cut Piece (working title), a work of re-mediation, documentation, performance, technical support and materiality. Developed over a week-long residency in which the exhibition space is architecturally reworked while remaining open to the public, Re-cut Piece (working title) produces and stages the montage of multiple parallaxes – from haptic to audial, performative as well as architectural.

Comprising multiple durational interventions within the Gallery, Re-cut Piece (working title) introduces a layered process of re-organisation of technical, social and biological organs into a perverse aggregate. The installation includes a new moving image piece that takes documentation of a historic performance as its initial motif to display the activity of kneading dough into photocopier carbon and microphone windshields. Residues from the video’s production are redeployed in the gallery, whose space is also being figuratively kneaded over the course of the week.

Martin Westwood’s residency and show are part of his current PhD with the Contemporary Art Research Centre CARC at Kingston University.

Revisiting Genesis  follows two nurses, both named Jackie, who assist people actively preparing for death to create biographical slideshows serving as their posthumous digital legacy. The slideshows become a tool for reflection on cultural and social loss, friendships and memory as identity. When a group of friends request this treatment for Genesis – an artist who is dying symbolically and otherwise – Nurse Jackie attempts to activate Genesis’ memory through the making of her slideshow, which draws from elements of Ashery’s own autobiography and explores the disappearance of social and educational structures under contemporary neoliberalism. Jackie concludes that it might not be Genesis who is vanishing, but the structures she had relied on. Presented in parallel with Genesis’ story, the twelve episodes are intercut with improvised interviews between individuals with life-limiting conditions and Nurse Jackie, played here by a practising GP.

Developed in consultation with Medical and Death Online experts, including researchers at Kingston University, and produced with a range of artistic collaborators, Revisiting Genesis  responds to diverse influences spanning from feminist art practice to outsider and minority politics, as well as the emergent online death industry.

Oreet Ashery is a UK based interdisciplinary artist whose politically charged and socially engaged practice includes exhibitions, performances, videos and writings, in an international context, that explore issues of gender materiality, potential communities and biopolitics. Recent presentations include Fig.2 (ICA, London 2015), Animal with a Language (waterside contemporary, London 2014), The World is Flooding (Tate Modern, London 2014) and Party for Freedom (Artangel 2012-13). A current Stanley Picker Fellow in Fine Art at Kingston University, Ashery is represented by waterside contemporary.

Revisiting Genesis is commissioned by the Stanley Picker Fellowships at Kingston University and supported by a Wellcome Trust Arts Award, public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England, Tyneside Cinema, Goldsmiths University of London and waterside contemporary.

Founded in 1634 with the alchemical ‘union’ of Sir Nicolas and the legendary Lady Marianne – also named The Bull – the esoteric Hunting Society has remained, up to the present, undisclosed to the public eye. For The Hunters of the Invisible by Charlotte Bergson, the viewer is invited to glimpse into a parallel blueprint of creation. The exhibition forms a dialogue between objects kindly loaned by the Hunting Society and new work by the artist resulting from archival research recently undertaken during a residency at the Hunting Society Collection.

Known as a feminist artist and documentary filmmaker, Swedish/Danish born Charlotte Bergson has an ongoing interest in alchemy and not least in the work of Mr T. Smith. Also known as The Hunter of the Invisible, Smith’s work consisted of letters, experiments and notes found in a hidden attic chamber in Copenhagen; all ‘interpretations’ of the now missing alchemical manuscript The Saga of the Event. Written by Lady Marianne, the manuscript is the spiritual framework behind the Hunting Society’s ideological approach to the origin of creation, which may explain why the Hunting Society’s Archive holds the largest collection of Smith’s work.

Stine Nielsen Ljungdalh (b.1969) is a research candidate at the Contemporary Art Research Centre, Kingston University. Her practice centres on meta-fiction as a method for addressing different notions of the event, using perspectives from philosophy, science and alchemy. Her method involves the ongoing creation of a parallel world called The Zone; an alchemical theatre inhabited by fictional personas and organisations. Previous curatorial collaborations include Other Fictions at Photographic Centre (2013) and GamingGaming at New Shelter Plan (2014) both in Copenhagen.

‘I don’t want to design solutions…I want to design possibilities.’

Streetscape Offsite: Locations around Kingston upon Thames throughout Summer 2015.

Streetscape seeks to explore how street furniture inhabits and relates to its surroundings. Designer Fabien Cappello is inspired by the everyday and how we negotiate our urban spaces. From bollards, bike stands to public benches these generally anonymously designed, often unnoticed, objects are the workhorses of the built environment.

For his Stanley Picker Design Fellowship Cappello has researched the objects around Kingston town-centre. Taking into consideration the provenance, uses and contexts of the existing street furniture, in consultation with the Royal Borough of Kingston, Cappello has created a series of prototypes that aim to sit comfortably amongst what is already in situ whilst making an interesting improvement on what was previously there.

The Gallery installation includes an audio-visual collaboration with the filmmaker Rachel Davies, whilst all of the working prototypes commissioned for Streetscape will also be sited outside of the Gallery in the streets around Kingston upon Thames for the duration of the exhibition.

Fabien Cappello (Paris, 1984) is an award winning furniture and product designer working across contexts from commercial objects to limited editions and the public space. He studied at the University of Art and Design (ECAL) in Lausanne, Switzerland and in 2009 obtained a Masters degree in Design Products at the Royal College of Art, London. Cappello was appointed Stanley Picker Fellow in 2013.

Edition: To accompany this exhibition Fabien Cappello has produced a Stanley Picker Gallery Edition in the form of a key ring, based on his bike stand design which will be seen in the Gallery and on the streets around Kingston town centre. This limited edition key ring of 100 is made in steel with a dipped plastic coating in blue, yellow or grey, and is available for purchase directly from the Gallery for £15.

Events:
Launch Event: Thursday 23 April 6-8.30pm / All Welcome
Streetscape Walking Tour with Fabien Cappello: Saturday 16 May 2-4pm / Free Event / Booking Essential
Evening Salon with Fabien Cappello & Dr Catherine Rossi: Wednesday 27 May 5-7pm / All Welcome

Streetscape is supported by Kingston’s Mini-Holland Programme – A cycling vision for everyone.

The House of Fairy Tales has flown through time and space and all 15 dimensions to take up residency on the Stanley Picker Gallery Island, as part of a programme of events and exhibitions happening across the Borough of Kingston throughout February and March for  Histories in the Making: Celebrating 140 years of Kingston School of Art.

During their residency the Characters, Philosophers and Boffins of this universe-famous space-ship have inspired, cajoled and google-blasted the students of Kingston University into making a series of curious museums and exquisite troves of learning. These are receptacles, coffers and cases of whimsy and miniature worlds, caskets of jewel-bright objects, models and artefact and moving new-streams of fabulous, fascinating ideas and information, surreal and poetic treasures guaranteed to inspire the youngest and the oldest of minds. Each Trove will be a living 3-dimensional mood-board of inspiration and creative innovation: a giant Lilliputian collaboration with a thousand authors.

Let your imagination run riot in The Misplaced Museum! Investigate the clues and the mysteries of the dream world from the sleepwalking detectives at The Somnambulant Detective Bureau, conjured up by the brains of Oliver Wallace, MA History of Art and MA Creative Practice students.

Discover the power of light at the workshop bench of Olaf The Lofty an eccentric inventor, designed by Mark Bayley. Be beguiled by The Mouse House, a living sculpture by artist Dmitri Galitzine, which has travelled in all 15 dimensions the House of Fairy Tales for the past 6 years.

Feast your eyes upon the marvellous automata pieces. With exhibits from Keith Newstead, Ron Ruller, Peter Markey, Fi Hensall and Matt Smith and enter through the secret wardrobe to immerse yourself in the magical crochet world of recycled rubbish, crafted by Anna Kompanients and crochet plastic-eers from Foundation Diploma and BA Fine Art.

The House of Fairy Tales residency was preceded by a ‘Take-Over Day’ where the children of Kingston and beyond descended upon the Faculty of Art, Design & Architecture to follow a magical trail around this inside-outside building and its very special Gallery on the island round the back. The culmination of this day of thinking-through-making swarmed, all knowledge, like busy bees, onto the Stanley Picker Gallery Island where the experiment continues for the eight weeks of the exhibition.

The House of Fairy Tales is a National Children’s Arts Charity established in 2006 by Kingston Alumni Gavin Turk and Deborah Curtis to inspire creativity and imagination in children and their families.

Associated Events:

Gallery Breakfast Club: Sat 14 Feb 11am-1pm
An opportunity for visitors of all ages to meet Gallery staff for coffee, juice and a pastry (if you get here early enough!) to look around our current exhibition and find out about our upcoming programme. Includes creative activities for children.

The Somnambulant Detective Agency is Open!
Tues 17 Feb 2-4pm, Wed 25 Feb 3-4pm & Wed 4 Mar 1-2pm & 4-5pm
Join The House of Fairy Tales Somnambulant Detectives on a journey through time, space and The Misplaced Museum. Interactive Performance for ages 5 to Adult

Meet up with Fellow Terrestrials: Wed 18 Feb 5-7pm
Join members of local Meetup groups for conversation, refreshments and shared exploration of The Misplaced Museum. All Welcome

Lunchtime Talk + Evening Salon with Deborah Curtis: Wed 25 Feb 1pm /5-7pm
Take a trip into all 15 dimensions to talk about the serious art of play to inspire creativity and imagination in children and adults. All Welcome

Report for The HoFT Examiner: Sat 14 Mar 11am-5pm
You are invited to investigate and report for The House of Fairy Tales Newspaper, The HoFT Examiner with artist Vicky Willmott. All Welcome / Drop-in Anytime

Lobby Display – peek into the Time Capsule: Launch Tues 17 March 5-7pm / Open until 21 March
A showcase of new work made by local residents and school children which has been inspired The Misplaced Museum and the vibrant history of Kingston School of Art – part, present and future! All Welcome

All Event Enquiries: n.kay@kingston.ac.uk / 020 8417 4074

‘the suburbs are self-medicating, the suburbs are hallucinating, England is hallucinating’

In 2011 it was the suburbs that saw the most dramatic displays of collective violence. In Croydon, Edmonton, Catford, Streatham, the barriers broke down and the suburbs suddenly became porous, territorial markers melted and the streets became the site of collective engagement with the spectacle of consumerism, the anger directed towards pawnbrokers, retail parks and high street stores.

A reversal has taken place; the suburb is the new inner city. The situation is fractured and complicated but, after a year spent walking around the outer reaches of South-West London, artist Laura Grace Ford argues the suburbs emerge as two distinct categories: Zones of Refuge where bankers, frazzled with siphoning public money, relax and dream of heritage England, of Tolkein, of homes and gardens; and Zones of Sacrifice, the areas allowed to decay amidst sites of gentrification, held captive on all sides by the ghoulish horror of Cath Kidston and cup-cake baking.

‘What happens when you’re forced to spend hours immersed in stultifying work; split-shifts at McDonalds in a traffic island near Heathrow, living in a Travelodge in Sunbury working on the construction of some luxury development, or stuck in a call-centre in Croydon hassling people about loan repayments. You might seek solace in marginal political ideologies, the EDL, Al-Muhajiroun, the comfort and camaraderie of faith, with the thrill of violence to puncture the boredom. But mostly you self-medicate.’

Laura Grace Ford (formerly Oldfield Ford, b.1973 Halifax, West Yorkshire) is a London based artist and writer. Her work is concerned with issues surrounding contested space, landscape, architecture and memory, reworking the drive or drift as a subjective process of mapping territory along the lines of social antagonism. Awarded the Stanley Picker Fellowship in 2013, she has spent the last year walking through the outer-edges of South West London. Recent exhibitions include Ruin Lust Tate Britain (2014), Recording Britain V&A (2012) and Anarchy Unmasked British Library (2014). She is the author of Savage Messiah (Verso, 2011).

To accompany her exhibition Laura Grace Ford has produced the very first of our Stanley Picker Gallery Editions, specially created to directly support our programme of activities and the artists and designers we work with. This colour lithograph, on Saunders Waterford paper, entitled Abiding by Rituals (signed-edition of 50 copies) is available exclusively for sale from the Gallery priced £145 (+ VAT). See full image above and contact the Gallery to receive further details.

Associated Events:

Launch Event: Wed 8 Oct 6-8.30pm / All Welcome

Suburban Drift: Wed 12 Nov 2-5pm
Join Laura Grace Ford on a walking tour of the local suburbs / Free Event

Stanley Picker Gallery Talk with Laura Grace Ford: Wed 12 Nov 7pm / Drinks 6pm / All Welcome

Launch Event: 2-4pm Saturday 31 May / All Welcome

“Seeing, hearing, speaking, breathing, living, all these wait to be made fecund by an innocent potency.“
Irigaray (Elemental Passions,  1992)

Taking its title from Luce Irigaray’s interrogation of language and love, this exhibition features artists working with photography and conceptual practices, including archival 1970s and 1980s works by Alexis Hunter, Karen Knorr and Jo Spence, alongside a series of contemporary artists whose works all use the visceral and material experience of life; the exhibition locates subjects of gender, ethnicity and class as strategies for thinking about anxiety and precarious consciousness in a neo-liberal 21^st century society.

The ‘personal is political’ (Carol Hanisch 1970) and ‘consciousness raising’ (Kathie Sarachild/Anne Forer 1967) is evoked not nostalgically or fashionably but awkwardly, demonstrating affinity and action in political and art practices. Within this exhibition words and voices (and finding them) are seen as tools for analyzing and theorizing the structures of shared subjectivity, allowing personal problems to be seen as symptoms of wider socio-political issues. The French feminist theorist Irigaray expresses the utter conditionality of language to concepts of identity and difference in asking ‘Was it your tongue in my mouth, which forced me into speech?’ (1992), in which she echoes Lacan’s reworking of Althusser, to suggest that the unconscious is structured like language.

Works in the exhibition include John Akomfrah’s film,  The Stuart Hall Project, which employs archive TV news and interviews with seminal cultural theorist Stuart Hall, alongside a Miles Davis soundtrack. Alexis Hunter’s The Model’s Revenge I-III (1974) silver gelatin prints show a woman’s soft breasts, with hands between clasping a gun directed to camera, and her  Approach to Fear: XVII: Masculinisation of Society – Exorcise (1977) presents a grid of 10 photographs of a male torso with a woman’s hand invading and defacing it with black paint.

Jo Spence’s works include  Early Attempts at Photomontage (1975), printed with the text ‘I didn’t know money grew on trees till I met workers’ whilst  The Highest Product of Capitalism (1979) pictures the artist outside a bridal shop holding a sign scrawled with the words ‘I’ll take almost any work’. The Faces Group (1978) shows a group wearing paper bags over their heads written with signs including ‘Fuck off, piss off’, ‘I possess clarity’ and ‘I no longer see through the veil of illusion’.  Not Our Class (1989) shows Spence naked against a backdrop with lists of boyfriends down one side and theorists down the other, and the photo-therapy series including Untitled (Mother and Daughter Shame Work: Crossing Class Boundaries) (1988) locates the social as familial and internal.

Karen Knorr’s Gentlemen series (1981-83) are silver bromide prints depicting Gentleman’s club interiors with accompanying texts presenting the gentlemen’s inner thoughts, whilst Sarah Jones c-type print  Colony (Couch) (IV) (2006) references the psychoanalysts couch.

Ellen Cantor’s video Within Heaven and Hell  (1996) features the artist’s voice narrating a story over intercutting scenes from The Sound of Music and Texas Chainsaw Massacre,whilst Peter Harris’s Art Dads (2012) are drawings showing the artist as a baby, cared for by Art World greats such as Gilbert and George. Bob and Roberta Smith’s signs call for a politics and culture informed by art, whilst Janette Parris makes a satirical critique on the status of the artist, and Heather Sparks  It Colors Your Life: A Coloring Book of Drinking and Smoking evokes a Hogarthian scene of debauchery in the 1990s.

The artistic practice of the 1990s – known most widely for the YBA movement – drew upon this earlier period of political self-consciousness and activism. An important legacy of historical and academic texts are recognised now, in the deployment of archives, a re-engagement with feminism and attention to the particularities of discourse, within practices in 2014.

The exhibition Your Tongue in my Mouth  serves as an accompaniment to Esther Windsor’s curatorial PhD research study at Kingston University entitled Ugly Beast, a curator’s novel telling the story of a series of art world characters on the therapist’s couch, including a teacher, an artist, a dealer and a gallery director. Cut loose from institutions, families, structures, ways of thinking, knowing and even speaking, the novel’s characters struggle to find a voice and self-determination.

Q&A Event: 6pm Wednesday 5 March / All Welcome
Boudicca in conversation with Jonathan Faiers, author of Dressing Dangerously: Dysfunctional Fashion in Film

Boudicca is an avant-garde studio, founded in 1997 by Zowie Broach and Brian Kirkby, whose innovative work eloquently yet disobediently explores the creative territories between and beyond the worlds of art and design. Initially showing through galleries and exhibition spaces, Boudicca went on to present collections in London and New York, becoming the first independent British fashion house to be invited as a guest member of the prestigious Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture in 2007.

Boudicca’s fearlessly uncompromising working methods are both meticulously considered and emotionally charged. The duo’s richly researched work takes direct reference from cultural and political history, science and technology, nature and landscape, exploring the tailored silhouette whilst simultaneously exploiting a multitude of new disciplines – including 3D printing, processing, coding, film and chrono-photography – in an effort to examine, re-define, deconstruct and atomise fashion and identity. They strive for all their work to cause collision and rupture in known landscapes in order to create upheaval, describing their practice as ‘a hunt for the invisible’, a casting up of all possibilities, experiments, history, identity, design, landscape, sound, body, breath, narrative, to form an alchemic persuasion new to ourselves.

For their Stanley Picker Fellowship, Boudicca have been exploring the continued integration of digital imaging and the moving image as expressive mediums within their wider studio practice. Referencing the cultural history of the Gallery’s island-location and the surrounding Hogsmill River – its upstream river banks immortalised in Sir John Everett Millais renowned painting Ophelia (1851-52) – The Liquid Game is an immersive audio-visual installation that exploits the architecture of the Gallery, provoking a sensory response in the viewer that highlights their corporal presence in the exhibition space.

Boudicca have previously presented work at the Royal Opera House, Kensington Palace, Haunch of Venison Yard and Somerset House in London, FIT New York, Centraal Museum Amsterdam and Arnhem Biennale. Their work was recently shown in Fashioning the Object at The Arts Institute of Chicago (2012) and in Glasstress with the London College of Fashion in Venice and London (2013), and was selected by Dr. Valerie Steele for her Greatest Designers A-Z published by Taschen (2013).