The Lloyd Gill Gallery: Artist

PRESS RELEASE

‘Altermodernism: new movement or moving backwards?’

Preview 11th April
Tuesday 14th April – Friday 8th May
Open Tuesday – Saturday 10am – 4.30pm

Curated by assistant curator Chris King and Gallery Director Lloyd Gill
The next exhibition will distinguish a response towards the new Tate Triennial show 'Altermodernism'. The Tate curator Nicolas Bourriaud attempts to suggest a new movement through connecting a selection of artists together in one tight bundle that assimilates through essentially globalisation. Gallery Director, Lloyd Gill was intrigued by this brave step forward from a curator and wanted to gain reasoning for his glorified announcment. Bourriaud received critical dismal to lack of quality and substance from many of todays important critics.
“This is an iconoclastic show. Tear up traditional expectations, fling them in the air and watch them flutter down all about you, in any old order and size and shape and all mixed up and in a mess” Rachel Campbell-Johnston, the Guardian art critic.
Surely in an attempt to adapt modernism you need to adjust ordinary values of curation and separate the normal methods into more radical approaches.
Waldmar Januszaczak, art critic for the times, attacked the institute and slated the exhibition in his review of the ‘Altermodern’. He stated in the times “Altermodern: This meaningless adjective, created out of the elision of alternative and modern, is supposed to sum up the current location of British art” he does not seem to grasp the understanding of globalisation. The exhibition is not emphasising the current location of British art. The exhibition is trying to deliver globalised cultures into Britian in the form of art. Perhaps Januszazzak wanted the Tate to uncover all realms of good britart, this was not the intention.
The assistant curator will convey a new direction of artists who consist of quality, drive, conceptual substance, who reflect on globalisation, politics, economics and culture.
The artists selected from the Tate Triennial will be reflected upon through similar artists that correspond to their attributes and fluxuations.
It will be a post-triennial interface that will reflect on the artists selected for the Triennial in response to artists Chris King has selected to participate.
Chris King short essay on the exhibition ‘Altermodernism’ Tate Triennial, at the Tate Britain 3rd February – 26th April
‘Altermodernism’ is the newest “ism” on the art history block. A term envisaged by The Tate curator Nicolas Bourriaud to portray a post-postmodernism ideal in contemporary art. Or More-Modernism if you will…

His stated objective is that art should be about a “new modernity [that] is emerging, reconfigured to an age of globalisation – understood in its economic, political and cultural aspects: an altermodern culture.”

In layman’s terms art should be less parody, less homage, less reverential to that which has presided it. Contemporary art should be about now, an art of the moment. Or that at least is how Bourriaud views it. There should be a “new direction” for artists that discusses modern sociological issues: globalisation; politics; economics; and culture.

Of these 4 sociological issues the key term is ‘Globalisation.’ The globalisation of politics, economies, and cultures, threatens to dilute our heritage, our national identity and more. The One Size Fits All ethos is loathsome in that a cultural artefact that tries to appeal to the widest possible range of people, is often diluted in its message. ‘Dumbing Down’ is a common expression and ‘Political Correctness’ another. Resulting in a conglomerate of culture, a society of “Multiculturalism” as Bourriaud puts it.

Bourriaud wants art to once again evolve into something new, something ‘original’. Is total originality possible in modern society? The Nucleus of the YBA movement are the ideas of Marcel Duchamp, an intellectual piss-take (pardon the pun) formulated over 90 years previously.

Mathew Collings agrees stating, “a new popular audience is obsessed by contemporary art. But I think they are being sold something that isn't really there: an all-in package of spirituality, depth and profundity. I am afraid the official institutions of contemporary art are just lying about this stuff.”

In short he desires not so much originality in the manner of Bourriad, but moreso a integrity that he feels is mising from contemporary art. An essence, a purpose, more soul, and les droll.
Bourriads desire and intuition in declaring this concept of ‘Altermodernism’ has been met with widespread derision from art critics, even contempt. “A practised satirist could not have dreamt up a more clunky example of phoney intellectualism elbowing out actual intelligence.” This from The Sunday Times art critic, Waldemar Januszczak, is one of the more biting attacks. They view The Tate Britain show as faux-intellectual, pretentious, and most patronising, naïve.

Becky Kidner
Kidner graduated at Kingston University in 2008 with a BA in Fine Art.
Kidner’s drawings document world economics, events and global issues in a montage format.
“My ongoing drawing project is the main focus of my work. I rigorously document every single day in a small book of drawings, the content of these drawings ranging from daily personal events, to larger scale global issues such as political and world events.”
One of the Artists selected for the ‘Altermodern’ exhibition, Gustav Metzger has simialities to Beckys work. I was particularly interested in the newspaper work Metzger started in the 1960’s as a fluxes artist. “Since 1960 when I first used newspapers, I have thought a great deal about them, and my attitude is in fact to encourage people to look carefully at newspapers, but analytically and critically. I think what I said with the Daily Telegraph in 1960 is that this is the world; look at it, and deal with it; and I emphasise the need to fight the newspapers, to fight the power of the newspapers and the power of capital, which is tied up with the whole media.”
I find Kidner’s graphical representations of modern sociological occurrences most interesting and an excited start to the exhibition. Metzger designated the subjective pages of the daily telegraph adjacent to one another on the walls of the Tate modern. Mostly political charged press with adverts designs from the sixes. In retrospective of his work, Kidner’s drawings take snippets of headlines from press and film association and are then juxtaposed with all sorted lineation.

Becky Kidner, Drawing 1 and 2, 58cm x 80cm, 2008.

Catrine Bodum
Bodum’s art is a substance endeavored from migration and travel to the USA and UK from originating from Switzerland. Bodum found studying in New York to be a contort structure that helps build her essence as a painter. Under the influence of the city that consistently beats, Bodums work manifested a translucent and absorbent state of flux. Her found images that eventually tied up together and became the substance for paintings were founded here.
The Chaotic and teeming essence of the ‘big city’ drove her work forward and she wanted more influence and a place to further her study, Bodum chose London. London being the hive of multiculturalism and identity would become Bodum’s new source to develop her painting style.
Catrine Bodum’s work fuses the creditability of having drifted though different cultures and place with modern aesthetics.
Catrine Bodum was born to my Danish parents in Switzerland, where She grew up with two sisters and a brother, and still return to live and work when she Is not abroad for studies or travel. After having graduated from Parsons in New York, in May 2007, Catrine committed to my focus in painting. She decided to stay another year in New York, to continue her studio work, and to find out whether this was really what She wanted. Catrine now find herself doing a masters in London at Byam Shaw School of Art, graduating in September 2009, and Catrine Is still determined.
Her work, which is predominantly large scale, ranges from collage to acrylic and oil paintings, but focuses mainly on oil painting. It stems from her everyday life, her naive daydreams and, at times to despair, extreme exaggeration of feelings. She gets influence from music, animals, visual imagery she receives from passages in books, patterns in architecture or fabrics, 18th century art, Baroque and Rococo especially, with their romantic/erotic connotations, boats, colour schemes in magazines and of course Google image search. Catrine Is currently doing a new series of work, based off inspiration. Catrine is getting from listening to Steve Reich and Philip Glass. This work has a monochrome background and uses black oil paint or china ink to make marks.

Catrine Budom, Untitled 3 (Bigum), 160 cm x 87 cm Acrylic on Canvas, 2006

Anne Brenner

Canadian-born, Brenner grew up in Montreal until her family, of French descent, moved back to France.
After her studies at the Beaux-Arts in Paris, Anne worked in the spirit of the land-art.
She has made several actions in zoos to collect footprints of animals on canvases. Brenner got the footprints of many animals: rhinoceros, elephant, tiger, leopard, and so on.
Later, Brenner went to Africa to collect footprints of wild animals. She stayed a year and a half and learnt to track the animals to recognize the ways they attend.
Brenner invested large canvases with footprints of elephants, hippopotamus, antelopes, and so on.
Then, Brenner went to Morocco to collect the prints of the ocean. Her paintings have sailed several months hanging on the sides of a boat.
Brenner has always continued painting in studio. In recent years, She devoted exclusively to painting.
A set of paintings explores the relationship of power between the old world and the new world. Palaces like the Louvre or Versailles versus futuristic buildings of Dubai or Shangai.
Another set of paintings explores the relationship between the human being and the social-economic world. It is this series of work that the Lloyd Gill Gallery is exhibiting due to its reflection on the sociology of natural human behavior within the economics of business.
Brenner has many acquisitions on her CV including solo shows at Galerie Espace Suisse – Strasbourg in 2000 and La Grande Serre – Cité des Arts et des Sciences, at La Villette at Paris in 2002. Among numerous grant awards Brenner has won the Léonard da Vinci Grant by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, France in 1989 an also has had a publication in the form of a book titled ‘les artistes au Jardin des Plantes’ by Luc Vezin, Herscher édition, 1990.

Anne Brenner ‘Monkey 5’, oil on linen, 32.5cm x 45cm, 2008.

Jill Doherty

Jill Tegan Doherty is a graduate from Chelsea College of Art and Design and currently a member of the ACAVA studio collective in Hackney.
In her work Jill actively engages with the surrealist tradition, her work serves as an investigation into the subconscious, in which she transposes the fleeting imagery that exists at the periphery of human imagination. Her work explores these musings making her imagery visible to the collective human consciousness. Her morphing of various species together prompts certain thought processes in the viewer, although what is culminated is an imagined form, the use of familiar subject matter forces a certain involuntary recollection. This recollection can lead to a more intense and intimate reaction to the imagery as it can trigger personal memories and allows the viewer to relate to the imagery thrust upon them.
There is an underlying haunting quality to the work, a certain hardship of social interaction and an air of confusion and entrapment. Each individual painting is riddled with subtle clues, forming suggestions to induce the mind into a certain ideation.
“I like to toy with this open-ended catalyst of deliberation in the viewer, that is, if they chose to climb deeper into the unraveling knots of the symbolism.” Jill Doherty.
Obviously Doherty likes to provoke the onlookers own subconscious with her use of unnerving imagery of disfigurement, social solitude and entrapment (perhaps in ones own mind.)
Among many of Doherty acquisition are this solo show ‘If I Were Blind I Could See’, 2008 at the Austin Gallery, Bethnal Green Road, London.

Jill Doherty, ‘Dead weights’ Oil and Acrylic on canvas, 104cm x 104cm, 2006.

Sam Hall

Apart from an occasional half-hearted foray into painting, Sam Hall had never painted seriously until 2002. Two years later, in 2004, he emerged onto the British art scene with a series of both representational and semi-abstract acrylic works based on places he had visited during a lifetime of travel.
It was the beginning of a meteoric artistic career. Within a month of his first exhibition at the North Norfolk Art Centre in April, 2004, he was selected as a finalist in the British nationwide EAC Art Awards. His work was later hung at The Business Design Centre in London .
In June 2004, he exhibited at Summers Art Loft in his hometown, Dorking, in Surrey . In 2006, he was again selected as a finalist in the British EAC Art Awards and hung in the Mall Galleries in London .
Shortly afterwards, in September 2006, he held a near sell-out solo exhibition at Gallery 47, opposite the British Museum in Bloomsbury , London. This was so successful that he was asked to hang his work in a new VIP Lounge at London Heathrow Airport . His next solo exhibition, in September 2007 at the prestigious Leatherhead Theatre in Surrey, UK, was another huge success.
In 2008, his work was again a finalist in the national EAC Art Awards and exhibited at the renowned Bankside Gallery on London's South Bank.
In 2009, he exhibited at The Blue Door Gallery near London Bridge in London and at the renowned Contemporary Fine Arts gallery, The Lloyd Gill Gallery, in Weston-super-Mare, UK.
Hall's distinctive style of painting, intense palette and ability to evoke depth, space and spirituality bring a vibrant, magical touch and compelling imaginative element to his work, thus vividly expressing the deeper essence of his subjects.
His work now hangs in private collections in the UK, Sweden , Germany, Italy and the United States .

Sam Hall Ice Melting Acrylic on gessoed MDF(Masonite) panel 80cm x 46cm 2007

Nathan Apperley

Nathan moved from my home county of Cornwall to Bristol in March 2006. He studied Fine Art at Falmouth College of Arts, and graduated in 2004.
In Cornwall his work focused on the everyday real; things and situations he saw around him on a daily basis. Cornwall’s landscape is undeniably beautiful, but the pastoral image cultivated by artists and tourist brochures alike disguise a harsher mundane reality which he understood and believed very important in depicting.
His canvasses are saturated with signs of modern life, and now that he has found his feet in the city, Nathan is beginning to document his new surroundings. Tower blocks, bingo halls, seedy guest houses. He finds these city attributes interesting and is intrigued by them all. His paintings are all uncompromisingly honest, and reflect the everyday real of the city.
He thinks composition plays a huge role in the outcome of his paintings. The places he paints, we tend to pass by in our day to day lives un-noticed, but when they become the center piece of a painting they take on a whole new life, and make us look at them differently.
Some of his paintings are a little voyeuristic, for instance the Alpha Guest House with it’s rooms lit up behind curtains, with only glimpses of life just out of view. He really likes playing with light and using it to create atmosphere and mood.
He takes inspiration from a number of artists. He really likes Edward Hopper and his use of glowing colour and how he uses composition. Other artists include Jock McFadyen, and his bleak visions of east London. Nathen is also influenced by George Shaw’s depictions of his suburban hometown, painted using humbrol enamel, and more recently Nathan has become aware of a painter called Christopher Campbell whose work really inspires Nathan. All these artists paint the world around them. Their works are direct, uncompromising and real.

Nathan Apperley Gala Bingo Hall, North Street. Oil on canvas, 80cm x 80cm, 2007

Rowena Keaveny
As an artist Rowena order’s her material against a domestically political structure. Most of her work to date has used my own personal history as its base not to be cannibalistic but to use that as a mirror between the personal and the political, the individual and the universal.
Her practice predominantly examines the interconnections between experience and memory, guilt and responsibility. Rowena examine how these ripple or cause after shocks into subsequent relationships, histories and generations.
Rowena coat’s the surface of the canvas with wood-dye, which through a dynamic chemical reaction creates both texture and atmosphere within the painting.
By using a series of apparently unconnected images within each painting Rowena want’s to create an environment in which the viewers eye can go under the surface and form its own story from what has been seen.
The jigsaw approach to the visual experience is revealed through a specific application of colour. The resulting dialogue created between the subject matter, oil and wood-dye enables the story or resonance of personal experience to whisper rather than scream at the viewer.
Her most recent theme based work has moved towards a more symbolic representation of the human condition and as a contemporary artist Rowena feel’s that it is important to make space for examining potentially ‘difficult’ subjects, to challenge the viewer and to ask questions even if you know the answers might not always be easy to hear.
Rowena has had numerous solo exhibitions most recently ‘Pandora went shopping but forgot the list.’ At the A.D.F gallery in Belfast during 2008. Rowena has won Artist in the community scheme award-research and development.(Create & Arts council) award in 2008 and worked My Space- curated by Cecilia Moore. The Helix, D.C.U. Dublin on a residency in 2008

Rowena Keaveny ‘In a democracy you can not hide for ever’ Oil, wood-dye, fabric and transfers on canvas 60 x 90cm 2008