Inspired by the ‘Dinner in the Iguanodon Model’ (1853) media dinning event, initiated by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins at Crystal Palace. Hawkins set up the famous “Dinner in the Iguanodon” on New Year’s Eve 1853 inviting 21 leading academics to sit inside one of his dinosaur sculptures to dine and debate. In 2022 foreign investment reconfigures the concept to interrogate the morality of genetics with invited guests inside ‘a giant pigs heart’ and audiences to peer into the debate at the dinning table.
We all have sayings or proverbs that help us and that we sometimes need to hear again: THE FABLE FILES – pilot invited mainly artists to share their proverbs on an answering machine over a few set August days, leading to ‘interior’ mixes that question the gaps and the synchronicity between dialogue. With more people at home during the pandemic, has the answering machine become redundant, or can we still be ‘uncontactable’ at times?
In the Republic, Plato warned that abandonment to violent laughter might provoke a violent reaction. Freud’s work has since reminded us that jokes can precipitate transgressive, or forbidden thoughts and feelings that may represent social taboos, or personal anxieties. Today, medical science has highlighted the importance of laughter for health and social wellbeing as it may lower blood pressure and provide a natural high by increasing the production of endorphins in the brain.
LAUGHING STOCK X CHANGE at Liverpool Community College (learning diabilities) and Lewisham College/London was set up in a particular kind of transit space, where students hang out between lectures. It established a ‘space’ for the exchange of jokes and laughter: a joke for a laughter, a laughter for a joke. At The Pozzo Pozzoza Museum in Berlin, jokes and laughter were being listened to, exchanged and recorded. The process of exchange stretched to its limit only to encounter the perspective of a precarious conversation: stored laughter and jokes.
following an invitation by http://www.rosemarycronin.co.uk the CARRYING ON film, launched in March 2020 just before lockdown at the Freud Museum as part of You Burn Me an evening of immersive performance and film marking against the backdrop of International Women’s Day. Carrying On leads the viewer through a cycle of emotions that range from female fragility to increasing tension, persistence, crisis and exhaustion. Made and produced by ‘Foreign Investments’ In collaboration with Megan Herschel of Femmetasia, Directed by Alma Tischlerwood, Cinematography: Alex Forsey, Sound: Max Ripple
HAPPY HOUR ! is inspired by weather reports, swinging between normality and crisis mode in the summer of 2019, a summer of rising temperatures, burning Tundra, deforestation and rapidly melting Greenland ice. The empty space of the Holden Gallery will provide the backdrop to a dance session, provocations and interruptions. In addition to the visuals and the sound, we are asking some vexed questions around the problems of making art in times of impending disasters and what it means to us socially, ecologically and environmentally. Interruptions is a series of interdisciplinary performances and events that intersects the Holden Gallery’s annual programme of exhibitions.
10.10.19 6pm to 7.30pm
Interruptions is a series of interdisciplinary performances and events that intersects the Holden Gallery’s annual programme of exhibitions.
HAPPY HOURis inspired by weather reports, swinging between normality and crisis mode in the summer of 2019, a summer of surging temperatures, burning Tundra, deforestation and rapidly melting Greenland ice. The empty space of the Holden Gallery will provide the backdrop to a dance session, provocations and interruptions. In addition to the visuals and the sound, we are posing some vexed questions around the problems of making art in times of impeding disaster and what it means to us socially, ecologically and environmentally.
Moonshine Walk, St. Helens, Sutton Manor, commissioned by Channel 4 Big Art Programme and Helena Housing. In collaboration with the 300 local residents an event (a procession) to celebrate Sutton Manor colliery (closed in 1991) with a forward looking thrust of hope. Since then the community took on this event as their own annual procession
North Downs Way End of Trail Marker competition | commissionaire: KCC, managed by https://www.dadonline.uk
Monkey Business, Cheeseburn Sculpture Garden, Northumberland, UK
GOLD FOR EVERY BODY ( Rio de Janeiro) The Brazil nut was re-imported in gold to its country of origin, Brazil.
RIVER FLUX ceramic tiles on 12m long wall) underneath the Aragon Tower, SE8 London | commissionaire: Berkeley Homes
← SKY SERIES
LOST, London (2016) →
FOUR WORDS, LIVERPOOL (2016) invited by Alan Dunn, artist/curator. A series of artistic interruptions on the The Media Wall, opposite Lime Street. The contributors include Gerhard Richter, Douglas Coupland, Shaista Aziz, Pavel Büchler, Fiona Banner, Levitt & Dubner (‘Freakonomics’), David Shrigley, retired seafarer Captain Pengelly, Hala Al-Alaiwat and ex-Liverpool FC striker David Fairclough and Foreign Investments.
Each set of FOUR WORDS will act as a counterpoint to the sales season and the invisible pressures of this time of year, with ruminations on value, money and exchange.
LOST curated and produced in collaboration with choreographer, Dickson Mbi for the Wild New Territories. The performance articulated, bio diversity and the loss of species within the UK. Ron den Daas & Kathy Kenny’s groundbreaking exhibition occupied galleries, museums as well as outdoor spaces in restored or protected wild lands in London, Vancouver and Berlin – Ultimately linking cultural and environmental ecologies, Wild New Territories presented themes that reflect the complex interconnectedness of all things, highlighting issues surrounding an uncertain environment and the potential collapse of ecosystems within historically charged urban contexts. The book reflects upon the exhibition and extends its themes through a series of essays, talks, featured projects and related documentation.
Book launch at The Linnean Society Burlington House Piccadilly, London W1J 0BF
