calendario eventi  :: 

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26/9/2007

Two exhibitions

White Columns, New York

Dawn Mellor 'Vile affections' + Jeff Funnell and John Will

Jeff Funnell and John Will

Other People's Projects is an occasional programming strand at White Columns, New York in which their project space is offered to idiosyncratic organisations, collectives, publishers, individuals, etc. to introduce their activities and/or enthusiasms to a wider audience. White Columns presentation marks the first stage of collaboration between the two organisations. Studio Voltaire will present a project at White Columns in Spring 2008.

White Columns will present two video works by the Canadian artists Jeff Funnell and John Will. The tragicomic video Making The Rounds (1981/82) documents, in a casual verité manner, the Winnipeg-based artists 1981 tour of SoHo galleries (inc. those of Ronald Feldman, Paula Cooper, Leo Castelli, and Mary Boone, as well as not-for-profits such as The Kitchen and Artists Space). At each stop the artists try to engage with the gallery director in an attempt to show them a sheet of 35mm slides (which in fact depict images of photographic equipment.) Their second film Exploitation Gallery (1981/82) records the presentation ­ and often bemused reception - of Making The Rounds at a Winnipeg storefront gallery. Seen together the two films provide a quarter-century Œflashback¹, as well as offering a still pertinent commentary on the social-mechanics at play in the art world.

White Columns is New York's oldest alternative art space. It was founded in 1970 by Jeffrey Lew and Gordon Matta-Clark as an experimental platform for artists. The non for profit gallery presents an ongoing program of exhibitions, projects, talks, screenings and events. Over the past thirty-seven years hundreds of artists have benefited from early exposure and support at White Columns, including: William Wegman, Sonic Youth, Jack Goldstein, John Stezaker, David Wojnarowicz, Group Material, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Cady Noland, ACT-UP, John Currin, and Sean Landers, amongst many others. Since 2005, under the directorship of Matthew Higgs, the organisation has presented the work of more than 250 international artists - of all generations - in more than sixty individual exhibitions and projects.

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Dawn Mellor 'Vile affections'

For the past ten years, Dawn Mellor has been painting portraits of celebrities, consciously misrepresenting, sexualising and violating imagery culled from photographic portraits, gossip magazines, film stills and the internet. The combination of imaginative sadistic cruelty, satire and empathy could be seen as communicating something about the use of both individuals and groups as scapegoats onto which unwanted fears and anxieties are projected. Mellor states that ³The paintings of this fashioned minority group of camp icons are vulnerable to my own diarist situationsŠ overloaded collusions of identity, bombardment of consumerist products and imagery, psychological trauma, political and financial impotency and so on as a catalogue of felt experiences of the isolation, frustration and anxiety of the urban condition.

The melodramatic camp humour deployed celebrates a long tradition of camp as a tool of resistance to oppression, particularly within Queer culture and imaginative violence is presented as a cathartic source of pleasure. Vile Affections has been specially conceived for the exhibition, responding to the gothic architecture of Studio Voltaire¹s former chapel space. Influenced by Dante¹s Divine Comedy, the show is an investigation of high society in the form of a portrait gallery, various ambassadors from the worlds of fashion, politics, music, film, art and literature suffer with varying degrees of dignity and respect.

Mellor lives and works in London. She has had recurring solo exhibitions at Team Gallery, New York: Victoria Miro Gallery, London; Il Capricorno, Venice and Galerie Drantmann, Brussels. She has participated in various group exhibitions including: Yvon Lambert, New York (2007); Defamation of Character, PS1, New York (2006); Expanded Painting, Prague Biennial (2005) and Remix: Contemporary Art and Pop, Tate Liverpool, Liverpool (2002). The artist has a forthcoming solo exhibition at Team Gallery, New York in April 2008, where the artist is represented.

For the opening night of Vile Affections, artist Mike Stokes will present a new fashion collection for spring/summer 2008 that will be performed by models and inspired by the vamp and the art collector. Stokes has a growing reputation for his performances that attempt to expose the social hierarchies and fragile egos surrounding the event whilst seemingly satisfying narcissistic fantasies.

Preview: 27 September 6 - 9pm
Featuring a new performance work by Mike Stokes at 9pm

White Columns
320 West 15th Street - New York

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