Stanley Picker Gallery

End of Love is a vaudeville performed at the end of the world.

The location is on the stage of a London theatre. There is no audience. There are twelve characters: a dark angel, a betrayed Cyclops, a love torn dandy, a man who has everything, an ancient moon, a pair of petty criminals on the run, a trapeze artist, a homeless man, a lonely astronaut, an imprisoned woman and an aged Jack the Giant Killer.

The film follows a series of fragmented vignettes that, though interrelated, deny any overarching narrative or  feeling of emotional closure. The characters’ monologues reveal  glimpses of  a lonely world of fear and desire, where they wait amidst crushed hopes and the impossibility of romantic truth. As the  actors each deliver their words, there is a sense that the theatre itself has become unmoored and floats untethered through time and space, the drama unfolding inside  the hold of a space ship or ancient sea-faring vessel.

Referencing theatre, literature, expanded cinema and performance, as well as the artist’s personal practice, End of Love is a poetic expression of love’s elusiveness, the non-linearity of time, and fleeting facets of personal memory.

Written and Directed by David Austen

Cast Dark Angel – Vicky McClure / Moon – Liam Smith / Dandy – Joseph Mawle / Petty Criminal Her – Mia Austen / Petty Criminal Him – David Leon / Homeless Man – Paul Anderson / Fat Man – Elliot Cowan / Nobody – Obi Abili / Trapeze Artist – Jenn Murray / Astronaut – David Austen / Prisoner of Love – Mia Austen / Jack – Richard Bremmer

Commissioned by the Stanley Picker Gallery, Kingston University
In association with the Rose Theatre Kingston
Produced by Partizan Films

Supported by the Stanley Picker Trust and by the National Lottery through Arts Council England

End  of Love publication designed by Fraser Muggeridge  Studio, with original script, extensive productions stills and an essay by Nigel Prince.  Published 2010 Modern Art Oxford and distributed by Cornerhouse ISBN 978 1 901352 49 8

Curated by Alexandra Stara

Strange Places: Urban Landscape Photography brings together 11 international contemporary artists who propose an alternative mapping of the globalized urban condition. Whether gazing at ambiguous thresholds on the edges of the city, or tracing liminal spaces in its centre, these photographs explore themes of place, identity, boundaries and the uneasy encounter between land and built environment. Uncertainty of location, scale, time of day and stance towards the implied drama of the image render the photographs resonant with possible interpretations, offering an ‘open’ space for the viewer’s projection and engagement. The images do not capture urban life as action, but meditate on the spaces where it unfolds. What arises from this observation of traces and aftermath is a poetic quality hinting at the potential beauty of the most unlikely places.

The ideas behind Strange Places are drawn from both photographic discourses and emerging ideas of alternative urbanism. In the realm of recent cultural and urban theory, scholars have argued for a broadening of our intellectual stance and range of media for engaging with the modern urban phenomenon. Simultaneously, a growing body of photographic land- and cityscapes has challenged established definitions and categories, in an attempt to represent the richness and ambiguity of our late modern notion of place. The artists represented in this show have been attracted to the blurred boundaries and surprising intersections of culture and nature, fact and fiction, private and public, to produce work that reveals complex modes of inhabitation, appropriation, alienation and destruction.

“The subject matter of my work has often been derived from mythology, literature and theatre, explored more recently through my book “Sometimes I think, Sometimes I am”. I am now taking on the challenge of dealing with these same subjects through different media, including photography and the moving image, and presenting it all for the very first time within a gallery setting.”

Renowned illustrator Sara Fanelli cemented her reputation with a successful series of innovative books for children, creating amusing stories and engaging worlds that have enthralled a whole generation of new readers. Her work has recently moved into unexplored territories, publishing her first illustrated book for adults Sometimes I think, Sometimes I am with Tate, and now working with the Stanley Picker Gallery to invite audiences to physically inhabit her designs through an installation of collaged objects, drawing, photography, light and film.

As part of her Stanley Picker Fellowship, Fanelli has been collaborating with students from Kingston University’s Faculty of Art, Design & Architecture to help her translate her idiosyncratic aesthetic into a three-dimensional environment. Taking bold steps away from the more familiar two-dimensional world of the illustrator, Fanelli invites us to join her on a journey that promises to be every bit as enchanting and inspiring as her work for the printed page.

Mike Marshall’s works reveal scenarios and forces that seem to interconnect in ways which can’t always be predicted, and where events are linked to unknown factors that cannot be controlled or precisely defined. Through a combination of observation and staged activity, these new works appear to question the veracity of what we see and hear in the world around us.

For Flood Plain a small set of pot-plants, purchased from a garden centre in India, were photographed then left in the sun to desiccate on an expanse of scorched, cracked earth. With no expectation of survival they will wilt, die and eventually be swept away in an inevitable flood.

Volume and Frequency portrays both a distant group of surfers patiently waiting for a wave, and the physical effects of wind in trees. One shot to another suggests a passing of propellant forces between the two scenarios, whilst a soundtrack employing the musical language of suspense constructs a precise balance between languid relaxation and anticipatory tension.

In No Love No Hate a lone figure can be observed in a hilly landscape using a rotational aerophone; a specially made instrument producing a harmonic tonal sound when rotated through the air from a length of chord. Shot from various vantage points on hills nearby, the sound perceived varies according to the distance it has been recorded. The resulting work seems to describe a particular relationship between activity and environment, and a different way of inhabiting space.

Filmed on-location at Kingston University’s Dorich House Museum, Strange Attractor was specially commissioned to accompany the exhibition Dora Gordine: Artist, Sculptor, Designer, the first major retrospective of her work, showing concurrently at Kingston Museum and Dorich House. Another piece that records the production of its own soundtrack, Strange Attractor explores Gordine’s former home and studio as a confined site of creativity, whilst reaching towards the larger world beyond it. The title is a term, coined by meteorologist and mathematician Edward. N. Lorenz, used to describe how chaotic dynamical systems combine and predict the effects of turbulence, or attraction, between two unfixed points; providing both a degree of predictability and an openness to ‘spill’ beyond any definable limits.

Events:
Artist Talk Wednesday 18 February 5.30pm
Art & Travel Symposium Wednesday 11 March 1.30-4.30pm
Roundtable with Mike Marshall and invited guests

Juneau Projects were formed  as a collaborative practice  in 2001  by  Birmingham based artists Ben Sadler and Philip Duckworth.  Their work engages with people and folk histories, bringing together live work and installation in new interactive combinations.

Created specially for their Stanely Picker Fellowship at Kingston University,  The Principalities constituted a series of intricately designed stages each with a specific theme or genre, akin to the arrangement of stages and tents at music festivals.

An evolving programme of live events saw Juneau Projects collaborate with a number of other artists, groups, students and members of the public, drawing upon traditional customs of public performance, such as Mummers Plays and Morris Dancing, and adapting these customs into a contemporary format and aesthetic.

Programme:

Exhibition Launch 6.30-8.30pm Wednesday 3rd December
with Juneau Projects Live
Preceded by artists’ talk at 5.30pm

Comedy & Spoken Word Night 7pm Thursday 4th December
with a special line-up of International Artists, Performers & Comedy Acts

Music Nights 7pm Wednesday 14th January & Thursday 15th January
with Local Bands, Fans & Specially Formed Student-Super-Groups

Pub Nights 7pm Wednesday 4th February & Thursday 5th February
with Quizzes, Karaoke & Open-Mic Sessions