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13/9/2004

Young gods

Clapham Art Gallery, London

selected graduates
Jo Alleeson > India Carpenter > Emily Davies > Kieron Dennis > Annie Kevans > Juliana Amaral Leite > Yugo Matsumura > Margaret O'Brien > Kristina O'Donnell > Alison Salter > Veronica Smirnoff

CLAPHAM ART GALLERY is delighted to present its 2004 edition of YOUNG GODS. A unique selection of BA and MA graduates has been invited to show a combination of their final pieces or new work. Their practises are varied, but all are linked by a very high standard of concept as well as technical expertise. By combining mediums such as video, sculpture, installation, printmaking, photography and painting, this show promises to be a vibrant celebration of current concerns. CLAPHAM ART GALLERY is confident that, as in its inaugural year in 2003, YOUNG GODS will provide a discerning and perceptive insight into the next generation of contemporary artists.

Jo Allesson (Royal College of Art: MA in Painting)
Alleeson creates beautifully rendered ethereal landscapes in oil. Her illusive works are concerned with 'exploring the boundaries between the experience of seeing and the experience of imagining'. Almost monochromatic, form subtly gives way to abstract marks and vice versa. These eerie imaginings are sensual, otherworldly and deeply atmospheric.

India Carpenter (Goldsmiths: BA (Hons) in Textiles)
This year's winner of the 'Elke Lacey Award for Textiles', Carpenter's use of mixed techniques within her work is unique and expert. Her outsized photographic self-portrait, '763,360.1/60', is immediately arresting and quietly seductive. The title refers to the amount of seconds that Carpenter has used to initially hand-stitch her own visage and then to photograph the result. By which means she creates an array of tensions; temporal, surface and technical, through which she invites us to share in her own anxieties and uncertainties of self-representation.

Emily Davies (Goldsmiths: MA in Textiles)
Davies' text-based work derives fundamentally from her own dyslexia. Sharing in Barthes' consternation at colloquial versus official language, Davies questions the latter and enforces her own way of expressing herself according to her own means. In choosing to employ shop sign letters, she brings into question symbolic orders within advertising and the commercial sector.

Kieron Dennis (Royal College of Art: MA in Communication Art and Design)
Dennis has exhibited internationally for many years now. 2004 saw him selected for the Becks Futures Student Prize for Film and Video at ICA. He was also awarded the Royal College of Art Chris Garnham prize for photography. Dennis' video work combines a mastery of digital techniques ranging from photography to editing to sound and image manipulation. By employing a complex use of visual and acoustic signs and exploring the obsessive mind of the neurotic, his work is deeply psychological. However, his use of wit and wordplay lends his work a humanist element that makes it instantly readable.

Annie Kevans (Central Saint Martin's: BA (Hons) in Fine Art)
Annie Kevans has enjoyed great success since her final show, being bought by Charles Saatchi and included in Art Review's top 25. Kevans' subtly rendered portraits of young boys in oil on paper or canvas belie an inherent darkness. Concerned with 'belief systems and patterns of behaviour… historiography, manipulation and the fragile concepts of webs which bind us together’,'Kevans has rendered a series of portraits of ‘e'il' political leaders from the twentieth century. Stalin, Polpot, Hitler and Hussein all figure amongst others as young innocents, forcing us to consider prescribed and potentially alternative histories as well as the complex ambitions of the human mind.

Juliana Amaral Leite (Chelsea: BA (Hons) in Fine Art Sculpture)
Brazilian Born artist Juliana Leite works across mediums in video, installation and sculpture. Her work is intensely charged. It is psychological, sexual and physically aggressive. Leite's deformed bodily sculptures refer to Hell, somewhere which has 'historically been imagined as a place of physical breakdown. 'Thing' and 'Victim' have both been inspired by this concept of unstoppable destruction. They are snapshots of a process of constant mutation and adaptation.'

Yugo Matsumura (Camberwell: MA in Printmaking)
Japanese artist Yugo Matsumura utilises traditional as well as technologically progressive techniques to render his prints. 'Landscape of London' reflects his experience in London as neither tourist nor native. This work is a personal response to Matsumura's experience here. By combining typically Japanese with London-based imagery the artist creates his own visualization. The result is a vibrant, highly original cityscape.

Margaret O'Brien (Slade: MA in Fine Art)
O'Brien utilizes everyday experiences and objects to create penetrating, psychological installation and video work. By intervening with a strip light, a clock, or a letter-box, O'Brien uses the unforeseen to manipulate our expectations. Almost supernatural in feel, her work challenges our primary senses by upsetting our natural rhythms and destabilizing our internal responses.

Kristina O'Donnell (Chelsea: BA (Hons) in Fine Art)
O'Donnell is concerned with the changing rhythms involved in painting and photographing. Working in oil and resin on a miniature scale, her works demand examination. However, they both entice and prevent closer inspection by imprisoning the image within its gloss resinous surface. Immaculately painted in dark hues, these works produce an aged, melancholy atmosphere.

Alison Salter (Central Saint Martin's: BA (Hons) in Fine Art)
Salter's photographic images display a gruesome manipulation of the human body. Abstracted and twisted to a great extent, these hybrid close-ups both repulse and entice. Through their immaculate editing one is forced to consider and question the verity of the image but is unable to arrive at any logical conclusion other than a fascination of the brutalized, deformed shapes before us.

Veronica Smirnoff (Slade: BA (Hons) in Fine Art Painting)
Royal Academy bound Smirnoff embraces her Russian spiritual heritage by making beautifully rendered icon paintings. Her delicate paintings are made with egg tempera on gesso on oak boards shipped from icon manufacturers in Moscow. This traditional veracity, however, is undermined by the choice of her imagery, which might be derived from fashion magazines or from her own imagination. The works are intriguing and original, and her materials are expertly manipulated.

Exhibition Date:
Wednesday 15/09/04 – 09/10/04
Opening Preview (Serving Mixed Cocktails): Tuesday 14/09/04 7.00pm – 9.00pm

Gallery Hours: Tue-Sat 11am-7pm

Contact: Zavier Ellis / Aniko Pall

Clapham Art Gallery
61 Venn Street
London SW4 0BD
Unit 02
40-48 Bromell's Road
London SW4 0BG

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