Past Exhibitions
Notes from the Underground
13 Mar 2009 - 14 Mar 2009
Private View 6 - 9pm Thu 12 March 2009
Dystopian visions from the splendid isolation of the underground
"At that time I was only twenty-four. My life was even then gloomy, ill-regulated, and as solitary as that of a savage. I made friends with no one and positively avoided talking, and buried myself more and more in my hole....I sometimes wondered why it was that nobody except me fancied that he was looked upon with aversion?"
(Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground)
In London, perhaps more than in any other city, young, emerging artists can use their lack of position within the art community and the city at large as a point to reflect on through their work.They choose to live and make work in a city where there is a large interest in contemporary art, yet despite this doesn't seem to welcome their presence. The vastness of the city and its inescapable divisions in social class give them the feeling of being an outsider. This, like Dostoevsky's own position in his society, creates opportunity for reflection, a reflection that takes joy in its uncomfortable melancholy. The exhibition investigates the outside world. It presents visions of that world from the artist's perspective as detached spectator rather than actively engaged member of the community. As a result the works don't seek to offer solutions but seem to celebrate and immerse themselves with the depicted dystopian visions of man's environment.
These ideas, brought together in an exhibition, give the audience an opportunity to experience an artist's raw unpolished awareness of society, a registration of the suspenseful paranoia an artist experiences throughout their search of an access point into this world. This exhibition thaws the frigid grime of the darkest days of a London winter. The panicked gestation of the works have crunched out of their dirty crust.
Life is hard and so are we.
Jorge Cabieses Valdes
Jennifer Medwid
Mark Davey
Gorka Mohamed
David Ferrando Giraut
Jörg Obergfell
Robbin Heyker
Joep Overtoom
Monica Ursina Jäger
Charlie Tweed
Trevor Kiernander
Vicky Wright
Harry Meadows
notesfromtheunderground@ymail.co.uk
Images from Notes from the Underground
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