NO
LETTERS
21 MARCH – 21 APRIL
IAN BREAKWELL | LEIGH CLARKE | LUCY HARRISON
| DICK JEWELL | CONOR KELLY | BOB & ROBERTA SMITH | PETER SUCHIN
Curated by Leigh Clarke
VIEW
WORK
No
Letters investigates the dissemination of public information through
various forms of reportage, carried out on both a local and a global
level. Each contributing artist has made work that seeks to debunk the
way we receive news of current affairs, gossip, advertisements and everyday
instructions, revealing the truths obscured beneath the familiar yet
effective tactics of distraction and deception employed by the media
today.
No Letters is the third in a series of interlocking projects
organised by the artist Leigh Clarke. The book and exhibition
borrows its title, as does that of the related from the first
headline spoken by the spoof newsreader in Ian Breakwell's 1980
film, The News. Breakwell’s presenter, broadcasting
from a local TV station, delivers a series of mundane news items,
including stories about old people leaving an auditorium and reports
about the sudden appearance of holes in the road. As well as implicitly
calling up the issue of the relationship between visual and textual
images, the term “No Letters” punningly alludes to
the fact that the first draft of the book’s running text
went astray in the 2007 postal strike; fortunately its author
had retained a copy of his work.
Ian
Breakwell’s combination of found newspaper articles
and handwritten text in the 1969 Diary and the for-mentioned
film The News, show Breakwell’s extensive intrigue
in the banality of modern life through various forms of reportage.
The 1969 Diary is one of the artist’s earliest
multi-media entries into his life-long diary that he obsessively
worked on until his death in 2005. Solo exhibitions include Diagnosis,
Anthony Reynolds Gallery London; The Other Side, Tate Britain
London; The Word Is, Anthony Reynolds Gallery London; Deep Faith,
291 Gallery London; Monk, Temple Bar Gallery and Studios Dublin;
The Other Side, De La Warr Pavilion Bexhill; Auditorium (in collaboration
with Ron Geesin), Broadway Nottingham and Bellring (in collaboration
with Ron Geesin), Durham Cathedral.
Leigh
Clarke’s paintings communicate good news out of
bad news. He has created a font out of negative headlines used
to advertise the Hackney Gazette and then made news about positive
happenings that occur everyday in the area. The work twists the
media-tactic of scare mongering to sell news on its head. His
work has been exhibited in the John Moores 24 Painting Prize,
Gasworks Gallery, Frieze Art Fair (Resonance FM stand), Fieldgate
Gallery, Museum of Breda, LOKAAL01 Holland, Le BLAC Brussels,
Keith Talent Gallery and Contemporary Art Projects. He has made
numerous performances including those at The Art Car Boot Fair,
Resonance FM, Alma Enterprises, Hales Gallery and Keith Talent
Gallery.
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Ian Breakwell, Episode
in a Small Town Library, 1970
Courtesy Anthony Reyolds Gallery
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In
Library Bingo by Lucy Harrison, the artist
replaces bingo calls with library book titles from the Lincolnshire
Libraries Collection in the North Parade Social Club, Skegness. Reclaim
the Night is a documentation of a walk taken in 2006 in Leeds,
retracing the steps of the original 'Reclaim the Night' women's march
in 1977. The campaign was initiated in response to the police advice
during the time of the Yorkshire Ripper murders that women should stay
indoors after dark, and called for safer streets and an end to 'curfew
mentality'. The 2006 walk was in the company of Al Garthwaite, organiser
of the 1977 march, and Katy Rochester, curator at Leeds City Art Gallery.
Harrison’s work has been included in Hope and Despair, Cell Project
Space London; O Dreamland, Greatstone Kent; Transition Gallery / Club
Shepway, Post Paulo Futurum Museum of Breda / Lokaal 01, Breda, Netherlands?,
GIFT Museum MAN Liverpool, Rag and Bone, Three Colts Gallery, London;
Tres Riches Heures Lokaal 01 Breda / Le BLAC Brussels & Keith Talent
Gallery, London.
In the work The Unexpectedly Iconic, Dick Jewell
continues to confront us with his investigations of found imagery by
exhibiting an Evening Standard found in his toilet selectively defaced
by his young daughter, Raphaela. Queen Emily I cross-fertilizes
two stereotypical reprographic images of class extremes to express his
idea of the monarchy of the future. In Cosmo/Babies, Jewell
exposes the fact that Cosmopolitan magazine never publishes images of
babies by combining Cosmopolitan covers with photographs of infants.
His shows and screenings include The acceptance World, Rachmaninoffs,
London; Toffee Armistice: British Art Now Lemon Sky Projects, Miami;
ACT ART 4 Memoirs of a MERKIN Central Station, London; This Show is
Ribbed for Her Pleasure, Cynthia Broan, New York; Assume Vivid Astro
Focus, Tate Liverpool; Always a Little Further, Arsenale Venice Biennale;
Commonwealth Film Festival, Cornerhouse Cinema, Manchester and Dick
Jewell, Hysteric Glamour Shibuya Flag ShopTokyo.
Conor
Kelly’s film Gazette uses the cassette recordings of
elderly volunteers who read the news in the Hackney Gazette for the
blind or partially sighted. With the audio of his elderly collaborators
Kelly has revisited the site of these reports and has collected footage
much like a lo-fi TV news crew who frame their cameras on the site
where we know the horse has already bolted.
His solo exhibitions include Aerophone, Green On Red Gallery, Dublin;
Mercer Union, Toronto; Sound&Music, Fordham Gallery, London; Plainsong,
Peer Gallery, London; Conor Kelly, ON Gallery, Poznan, Poland.
Bob
and Roberta Smith’s hand written slogans project an
instantaneous truth about the newspaper image underneath. The works
peel back the layers of tabloid journalism, revealing his own take
on the unrealistic, over-exaggerations of daily journalism in what
he calls Newspaper Poems. Solo exhibitions include Hales Gallery, The
Baltic Newcastle, Galerie Praz Delavallade, Paris, Anthony Wilkinson
Gallery and Pierogi 2000 New York. He has his own radio show on Resonance
FM and has had two books published by Black Dog on his work entitled
Make Your Own Damn Art and Art U Need: My Part in the Public Art Revolution.
Peter
Suchin is an artist, critic and curator. He has contributed
to numerous British and international journals, including Art Monthly,
Art Press, Art Review, Frieze and Mute. As part of his contribution
to No Letters, Suchin has included a miniature exhibition,
Planchette, curated by Suchin in 2007 and presented within
a mechanical display device or "Pagivolt". The selected artists
are Vic Browne, Mik Godley (with Graham Lester George), Matt Hale,
Lee Holden, Lizzie Hughes, Liane Lang, Stephen Lee, Pat Naldi, Sarah
Sparkes, Jo Stockham, and Suchin himself. An explanation of the work
is available in the exhibition.
The book “No Letters” is available from the gallery and
is supported by The London College of Communication and LOKAAL01, Breda.
Installation image, No Letters
© NETTIE HORN |