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21/3/2011

Practice For Everyday Life

Calvert 22, London

Artists:
Tanya Akhmetgalieva, Olga Bozhko, Alexander Ditmarov, Yulia Ivashkina, Sergey Ogurtsov, Taus Makhacheva, Anya Titova, Arseniy Zhilyaev

In association with the Institute for Contemporary Art (ICA) Moscow, and Centre for Contemporary Art - Winzavod, Calvert 22 is proud to present new work from a selection of emerging artists from Russia. This unique presentation, conceived as an annual event, aims to convey a vivid sense of current artistic practice in Russia and introduce a new generation of artists and perspectives to the UK.

The participating artists have been co-selected by Joseph Backstein (Director of ICA, Moscow and Commissioner of the Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art) and David Thorp (Calvert 22 Associate Artistic Director) and drawn from the ICA, Moscow and the prestigious START programme, established by the Centre for Contemporary Art - Winzavod in order to promote and develop young artists from across Russia.

Both the ICA, Moscow, and Centre for Contemporary Art - Winzavod, have created a unique forum and context for a discourse in contemporary art among young Russian artists that has been largely missing from the Moscow art scene previously. Beside the ad hoc relationships that usually and perhaps naturally exist between artists, there was no formal means of offering practical and ideological support to assist - especially younger - artists in developing their ideas and being able to discuss and engage with contemporary art practice more globally.

All of the artists involved in this exhibition have directly benefited from being a part of these two programmes. Although they do not represent a trend or even a dominant 'school’ (such as the YBAs in the UK for example) they do noticeably demonstrate an engagement with contemporary art that is in dialogue with ideas currently being expressed elsewhere in the world.

Several of the artists in Practice For Everyday Life as well as studying in Russia have studied abroad; and between them they work across the disciplines of film, sculpture, photography, painting and performance. Whereas their precursors mounted a critique motivated by the repressive conditions that sought to control their practice, these artists, with more of an awareness of global discourse, critically appraise the mores of Western art while exploring their social and cultural identity. Tanya Aakhmetgalieva’s monumental textiles investigate the individual and the collective aspects of feminine identity. An engagement with the physical and psychological conditions of space is a repeated premise whether it is Anya Titova’s descriptions of cultural and social spaces, or Yulia Ivashkina’s imaginary settings for human indifference, Taus Makhacheva’s critiques of consumption, environment and identity or Olga Bozhko’s sculpture and environments in which nature and consumerism collides. Literary reference and language is a common concern; Alexander Ditmarov’s referencing contemporary artists and the dead classics, Sergey Ogurtsov’s sculptures made from key texts by writers such as Antonin Artaud and Gaston Bachelard and Arseniy Zhilyaev’s research into Sartre and a post-soviet interpretation of his philosophy.

The title for this exhibition is loosely derived from the seminal text by theorist, Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, in which he combined his various academic, psychoanalytic and spiritual interests to develop a theory of the productive and consumptive activity inherent in everyday life and to show how people will ultimately always individualise mass culture, appropriating and altering all range and types of everyday ephemera to make them their own. Certeau’s proposals are neither definitively the study of “popular culture”, nor necessarily the study of everyday resistances to regimes of power. Instead, Certeau attempts to show that everyday life works by a process of poaching on the territory of others, using the rules and products that already exist in culture in a way that is influenced, but never wholly determined, by those rules and products.

As a way of framing this group of artists, it felt both an appropriate and playful reference point, with the double meaning evoked by the word ‘practice’ nicely conveying both a conviction of intention as well as a sense of ongoing experimentation and development.

To coincide with the opening of this new exhibition, Calvert 22 has commissioned an expansive refurbishment of the main gallery spaces from newly established, upcoming architects, Feilden Fowles. Their brief was to create a more open-plan and engaging public space offering a reading area and resource hub to enrich contextual knowledge and further create opportunities for increased cultural exchange.

CALVERT 22 is the UK’s only not for profit foundation dedicated to the presentation of contemporary Art and Culture from Russian, Central and Eastern Europe. With five exhibitions a year from both emergent and more established contemporary artists as well as a range of contextual events, performances and activities, Calvert 22 aims to interrogate existing preconceptions about the art and culture of these regions and propose new possibilities for cross-cultural understanding and exchange.

Image: Taus Makhacheva. Rehlen (avar language flock), 2009. HD video, 7’21”. Courtesy of the artist

Press Enquiries:
Emma Clark 02076132141| emma@calvert22.org

Press View 22 March 10am – 1pm

Calvert 22
22 Calvert Avenue, London E2 7JP
Opening Hours: Wednesday – Saturday: 10am – 6pm; Sunday: 11am – 5pm
Admission: Free

Nearest Tube: Shoreditch High St/ Old St / Liverpool St

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