Biennale!

Half the artists are selected by international guest curators that we have worked with in some form over the past couple of years. We asked them to select works using the exact same criteria as us: we chose works that we feel are the most pertinent in our given context that we have access to. The selectors interpreted that brief in the way they saw fit and their selection was final. They were then responsible for obtaining the work and providing us with contextualizing catalogue statements. The other half of the exhibition is made up of video artists we have contact with from art school or the local scene, friends of friends, or by having seen their work in another show and getting in touch. In this way, the exhibition is not just a presentation of current video art from around the world but also an examination of how subjective and social connections form between artworks, the scenes and the artists emerging from them. The exhibition is also testimony to e-mail and home DVD authoring with messages bouncing across the above networked connections and posted DVDs tracing the physical ones. Through this process we arrive at some international non-place where everywhere is local and everywhere just as foreign. If that is indeed true, then what is the self-appointed authority we use to judge the value of works and their efficacy in their or our own contexts? Does a pluralism of representation sit easily with our own subjective view of the world?

Thanks to everyone’s participation, the project has become a very exciting selection of international video work and showcases some of the most interesting artists emerging right now from different local scenes. Maybe this survey is particularly timely in an artist-run space - and not an institution - at this moment as well as in this specific part of London undergoing transformation. (Anthony Gross)

Pressetext

Biennale!
Film and Video Exhibition
Kurator: Anthony Gross

mit Mark Aerial Waller, David Blandy, Gerard Byrne, Lu Chunsheng, Oriana Fox, Jonah Freeman, Jonas Fromm, Anthony Gross, Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard, Anne Marie Kennedy, Francis Lamb, Michelle Naismith, Damon Packard, Giles Perry, Josefina Posch, Andreas Schulenburg, Grace Weir, Jen Wu, Yang Zhenzhong