7/1/2004
Nothing If Not Satirical
the nunnery, London
The exhibition highlights the important contribution that artists have made to contemporary political debates using the twin media of video art and irreverent humour. It features landmark works by artists who have redefined the role of satire in video art and forms part of a season of avant-garde film and video works being shown at major british galleries in Winter 2003/2004.
Martha Rosler, Jenny Holzer, Tracey Moffatt, Doug Hall, Coco Fusco, Kip
Fulbeck, David Blandy
'Nothing If Not Satirical' highlights the important contribution that
artists have made to contemporary political debates using the twin media of
video art and irreverent humour. It features landmark works by artists who
have redefined the role of satire in video art and forms part of a season of
avant-garde film and video works being shown at major British galleries in
Winter 2003/2004. Other venues include Tate Britain ('Artists' Film in
Britain¹, taking place throughout 2003 and 2004), Tate Liverpool ('Art, Lies
and Videotape: Exposing Performance'), The National Gallery ('Bill Viola:
The Passions¹) and Millais Gallery, Southampton Institute ('Unlimited
Edition: Film & Video Work'). The exhibition is organised by The Nunnery and
curated by Pryle Behrman.
Artists & Curator
Martha Rosler has, since the mid-1960s, been a major pioneer in the world of
video art. Articulated with deadpan wit, her work investigates how
socio-economic realities and political ideologies dominate ordinary life.
Presenting critical analyses in accessible forms, she merges performance,
documentary and mass media images. Her rigorous artistic practice, and her
contributions to on-going critical discussions relating to contemporary art
and social theory, have profoundly influenced an entire generation of
younger artists. She lives and works in New York.
Tracey Moffatt is probably Australia's most successful artist
internationally. She has had over 50 solo exhibitions and her films have
been screened at the Cannes Film Festival. Her work is regularly featured in
major international festivals such as Venice Biennale (1997), Site Santa Fe
(1997), São Paulo Biennale (1996 & 1998) and Sydney Biennale (1992/93, 1996
and 2000). In 1997 a major mid-career retrospective was held at the Dia
Center for the Arts, New York, and in 1999 a large survey was held at
Fundacio "la Caixa" in Barcelona and the Centre Nationale de la
Photographie, Paris. 'Lip¹ is a video collage of Hollywood¹s favourite role
for black women: the maid. Sassy or sweet, sarcastically attentive or
flippantly dismissive, the performers who play them steal every scene they
are in. Giving lip was one of the few art forms in which Hollywood has
allowed black actresses to shine. But shine they do. Moffatt lives and works
in Sydney and New York.
Jenny Holzer (born in Ohio, lives in New York) is internationally renowned
for her linguistic interventions in every aspect of the social arena, from
parking meters to t-shirts to billboards to television. In 'Televised
Texts¹, Holzer adopts the form and language of commercial messages to
disrupt communication, presenting texts that are designed to stimulate
thought, with humour, and inspire a critical attitude in an often-passive
audience. As in all of Holzer¹s work, 'Televised Texts' presents deceptively
simple sequences that mix provocative social commentary with poetic
reflections.
Doug Hall is the chairman of the Department of Performance/Video at the San
Francisco Art Institute and is the co-editor (with Sally Jo Fifer) of
Illuminating Video: An Essential Guide to Video Art (1990). His work has
been exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art Biennial, New York;
Kunsthaus, Zurich; American Film Institute National Video Festival, Los
Angeles; ICA, Boston; Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston; The Museum of
Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Kijkhuis, The
Hague; and the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh. He has received numerous
awards, including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts; a
Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship; and a grant from the Contemporary Art
Television Fund. In 'The Amarillo News Tapes', Hall became a presenter on a
small, midwestern television station in order to draw attention to the
oddities of language and artificially created theatrics that are a part of
television news. He lives and works in San Francisco.
Coco Fusco (born in Cuba, lives in New York) is an interdisciplinary artist
and social theorist whose performances and video work have been seen
throughout the United States, Spain, Britain, Australia, Canada, Puerto Rico
and Mexico. 'The Couple in the Cage: Guatianaui Odyssey' documents a series
of performances in which Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gómez-Pena decked
themselves out in primitive costumes to appear before the public as
³undiscovered American-Indians² locked in a golden cage - an exercise in
faux anthropology which The Los Angeles Times called: 'One of the smartest
commentaries yet on stillÂrampant cultural and historical myopia.'
Kip Fulbeck is a performance and video artist based in southern California.
>From a Cantonese, English, Irish and Welsh background, he explores the
contemporary Asian American and Hapa (multiracial Asian) experience through
humorous autobiographical stories. Fulbeck taps into the ambiguities of his
identity while challenging the boundaries of "identity" as a category. An
inveterate storyteller, his multi-layered, nuanced tales are presented with
an irony that is grounded in his own blurred cultural footing and
fascination with pop culture. When asked to summarise his landmark video
'Sex, Love and Kung Fu¹, showing in this exhibition, Fulbeck wrote: 'Join
two crazed kung fu film fanatics as they argue over Asian American
masculinity (yes!), Asian American media representation (no!), and the
homoerotic subtexts of martial arts movies (what?).' Fulbeck has won several
major awards at international film and video festivals around the world.
David Blandy was born in London, where he also currently lives and works. He
completed his MA in Fine Art Media at Slade School of Art earlier this year
and his work has already featured in several important exhibitions,
including 'Beck¹s Student Prize for Film and Video 2002' at the ICA (in
which he won first prize), 'Nothing Special' at FACT (2003), 'LUX Open 2003¹
and 'New Contemporaries 1999'. He has recently completed a film commission
for Artangel and will begin an artist's residency at Grizedale Arts next
year. 'From the Underground' shows Blandy travelling on London¹s Tube while
extrovertly miming along to a CD by the Wu-Tang Clan (to the bafflement of
his fellow passengers). His work touches upon many of the questions raised
by multiculturalism and notions of ethnic identity. Is it always wrong for
one culture to usurp the language of another? Can this ever be a celebration
rather than exploitation?
Pryle Behrman is a critic and curator who lives and works in London. He
writes regularly for many of Britain's leading art magazines on a wide range
of topics, although in recent years he has specialised more and more on the
history and practice of video art. He has recently joined the Nunnery
Gallery as its Curator of Experimental Film & Video.
The Nunnery
The Nunnery is part of the Bow Arts Trust. The Bow Arts Trust occupies two
buildings opposite the historic St Mary Atta le Bow Church. One site is an
old factory built in 1818 and the other, which houses The Nunnery gallery,
was converted from a disused Carmelite nunnery built around 1850. The Bow
Arts Trust was established in 1995 as a cultural facility for the education
and enjoyment of the artists and residents of Tower Hamlets and its
adjoining boroughs, and to national and international audiences. The Trust
has established and manages The Nunnery gallery, over 100 affordable
artists' studios, and runs a London-wide educational programme involving
thousands of young people and adults each year.
Private View: Thursday 8 January 2004, 6.30pm  9.30pm
Exhibition Dates: Friday 9 January  Saturday 7 February 2004
Opening Times: Thursday  Saturday, 1pm-5pm
Location: The Nunnery, 181-183 Bow Road, London E3 2SJ, T: 020 8983 9737, F:
020 8980 7770 nearest stations: Bow Road
(Underground) and Bow Church (DLR)
the nunnery
181-183 Bow Road
London E3