Group Exhibition
29 Aug - 29 Sep 2007
KATE DAVIES - CLAIRE FONTAINE – OLAF NICOLAI – JORDAN WOLFSON
In the 1960’s, the feminist movement coined the slogan ‘the personal is political’. It encapsulated the idea that our personal lives are defined by political and social circumstances and are to a large extent politically delimited and determined. All the choices we make have political implications, and, by extension, as all personal choice is also political, then the political, the social, the economic and the cultural derive from our personal choices. Within the cultural realm, another expression, ‘poetic conceptualism’, defines the individual in an art context that is subject to a political partiality involving personal feelings, experiences and potential.
Jordan Wolfson’s films installations and videos have been so described. In his film of Charlie Chaplin’s speech from ‘The Great Dictator’, transposed into sign language, Wolfson makes a subjective political statement using the assumption that the work is political and the history that the work references is an opportunity to propose questions about the world we live in. In her installations, Kate Davis subtly mixes references that explore the relationship between the body and the object, the iconic implications of significant moments in the history of modern art chosen and selected within a personal referential system that knowingly expresses the personal and political contexts in which they were created and in which they are now exhibited. Olaf Nicolai utilises the language of conceptual art to create a new form of conceptualism that draws its impetus from contemporary culture as he makes statements that observe and critique the mores of present-day life.
The collective Claire Fontaine declares herself as a ‘ready made artist’ whose practice has been described as an ongoing interrogation of the political impotence that defines contemporary art today. Claire Fontaine questions her own role and purpose as an artist while bringing the rhetoric of agitprop into the sanctified environment of the art gallery.
In the 1960’s, the feminist movement coined the slogan ‘the personal is political’. It encapsulated the idea that our personal lives are defined by political and social circumstances and are to a large extent politically delimited and determined. All the choices we make have political implications, and, by extension, as all personal choice is also political, then the political, the social, the economic and the cultural derive from our personal choices. Within the cultural realm, another expression, ‘poetic conceptualism’, defines the individual in an art context that is subject to a political partiality involving personal feelings, experiences and potential.
Jordan Wolfson’s films installations and videos have been so described. In his film of Charlie Chaplin’s speech from ‘The Great Dictator’, transposed into sign language, Wolfson makes a subjective political statement using the assumption that the work is political and the history that the work references is an opportunity to propose questions about the world we live in. In her installations, Kate Davis subtly mixes references that explore the relationship between the body and the object, the iconic implications of significant moments in the history of modern art chosen and selected within a personal referential system that knowingly expresses the personal and political contexts in which they were created and in which they are now exhibited. Olaf Nicolai utilises the language of conceptual art to create a new form of conceptualism that draws its impetus from contemporary culture as he makes statements that observe and critique the mores of present-day life.
The collective Claire Fontaine declares herself as a ‘ready made artist’ whose practice has been described as an ongoing interrogation of the political impotence that defines contemporary art today. Claire Fontaine questions her own role and purpose as an artist while bringing the rhetoric of agitprop into the sanctified environment of the art gallery.