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July 2023
The return of the fireflies,
the Day of the fireflies
Workers'cottage residency Program - Emilie Pouzet & Elliot Barthez
The title of this latest residency showcase refers to the poet Pier Paolo Pasolini's fireflies metaphor for a fast-perishing society. A few months before he died in 1975, Pasolini illuminated the world with the last flickers of a declining civilisation in his article Il vuoto del potere (The Void of Power in Italian), published in the Corriere della Sera (Evening Courier, in Italian). Better known as The Fireflies Article, the text reflects a testamentary introspection where the writer evoked the disappearance of fireflies caused by air and water pollution.
The title of this evening under the Stars takes on its fuller meaning when one rereads this founding text that marked the social, aesthetic, and political culture of the 1970s in Italy.
Considering artists and poets as the ultimate night watchmen, carriers and protectors of the last sincere voices in a violated world, societies of political spectacles, humankind blinded ego and its constant fight for power and territories, its lake of integrity, loyalty, and its growing contempt for the living that engulf all forms of culture from all over Europe. The spaces and experiences like those we are presenting tonight are nothing but humbled proposals for construction sites. Sites we must undertake together, where we will need to deconstruct to rebuild these crumbling and dangerous structures.
For the creative residency project that I have called the Worker's Cottage - a direct reference to the communal past of the hamlet of Notre Dame - the summer of 2023 marks an essential turning point. Once again, freely and autonomously, I invited artists Emilie Pouzet and Elliot Barthez to a residence on the hamlet, on the lands where generations of farmers succeed to each other with a common goal to harvest the field respecting nature's orders and agendas. I should precise the familial farm of Notre Dame, where my grandparents and their parents before them cultivated the soil.
This land and its diverse cultures are a place of resistance and resilience yet a battlefield of personal, economic, and activist struggles.
For the dialogue between the notes, the sounds and the words collected during this week of residency and the land to be as strong and meaningful, the decision was to gather beneath this weeping willow tree. Its roots, along with those of the living and departed souls from the hamlet, draw nourishment from the natural well of its water table, some 30 meters below, right here, beneath our feet. Sheltered and hanging from its branches, each of us will become a firefly, a poetic element with a gentle resistant light, offering us all the possibility of new fields of experimentation and uniting our resounding whispers of hope directly in these deaf night ears.
Cred Roy
July 2023 - Pont Royal
WCR-020723/090723 ©2023 Cred Roy
13°C Editions
ISBN 979-8-21-102045-0 (Hard Cover)
ISBN 979-8-21-102034-4 (Soft Cover)
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May 2023
Breeze, Watermelon and Summer socks
Workers'cottage residency Program - Carmen & Luisa
[Eng.]
An immersive media landscape that explores the connection between the virtual and the physical world. Before you, an encrypted labyrinth intertwines the remnants of online traps with philosophical ideas about the construction of realities. The repetitive objects take on different physical and virtual forms, a key characteristic of the work's aesthetics. They represent the dissolution of opposites, such as virtual/physical or real/false, reflecting the retroactive thoughts that shape our interconnected lives.
These mirrored worlds are influenced by Jean Baudrillard's concept of hyperreality, challenging the hierarchy between mediated experience and immediate experience. Baudrillard asserts that our reality is closely tied to the media we consume, consciously or unconsciously.
However, what is the role of the images that surround us, and who benefits from their rapid and targeted dissemination? These questions, along with others that delve into the collective psyche of a post-internet era, imply the playful blend of technological artifices and organic intersections in the universe of Carmen & Luisa.
[...]
------------------
[Fr.]
Un paysage médiatique immersif qui explore le lien entre le virtuel et le monde physique. Devant vous, un labyrinthe crypté mêle les débris de pièges en ligne avec des idées philosophiques sur la construction des réalités. Les objets répétitifs présents prennent différentes formes physiques et virtuelles, une caractéristique clé de l'esthétique de l'œuvre. Ils représentent la dissolution des opposés, comme le virtuel/physique ou le réel/faux, et reflètent les pensées rétroactives qui façonnent nos vies interconnectées.
Ces mondes en miroir sont influencés par le concept d’hyper-réalité de Jean Baudrillard, qui remet en question la hiérarchie entre l'expérience médiatisée et l'expérience immédiate, affirmant que notre réalité est étroitement liée à nos vies et aux médias que nous consommons, consciemment ou inconsciemment.
Cependant, quel est le rôle des images qui nous entourent et qui en bénéficie avec leur diffusion rapide et ciblée ? Ces questions, ainsi que d'autres qui touchent à la psyché collective d'une époque post-internet, sous entendent le mélange ludique d'artifices technologiques et de croisements organiques dans l'univers de Carmen & Luisa.
[...]
Cred Roy
May 2023 - Pont Royal
WCR-220523/280523 ©2023 Cred Roy
13°C Editions
ISBN 979-8-21-102059-7 (Hard Cover)
ISBN 979-8-21-102065-8 (Soft Cover)
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Febuary 2021
the illusion of Truth -
Curated by Shih Ya-Tien @ Treasure Hill Art Village in Taipei
In contemplating the paradox of belief, an intriguing question arises: Why does something persist as truthiness in the minds of others, despite your conviction of its falsehood?
Our daily existence immerses us in a sea of external information, delivered through the channels of news, social media, and the intricate dance of gossip, conveyed in the nuanced forms of words, sounds, and visual images. Amidst this influx, obscured truths often elude verification due to ignorance, misunderstanding, or intentional manipulation by vested interests. Social psychology introduces the concept of "The Illusion of Truth" effect, revealing our inclination to accept falsehoods as facts through repeated exposure. This cognitive bias becomes the divide between "What we think we know" and the elusive realm of "What we actually know."
In the digital era, the sheer volume of information overwhelms our capacity to scrutinise each piece, exacerbating the chasm between perceived knowledge and actual understanding. This widening gap fosters the growth of subjective biases, laying the groundwork for potentially costly consequences. The ramifications, akin to the butterfly effect, manifest in barriers and persecutions, affecting individuals, ethnic groups, or generations. Lee Macintyre, in his exploration of the Post-Truth era, wryly comments on environmental disputes, forewarning, 'When the water encroaches upon their $5 million abodes or disrupts their businesses, people may finally heed 'the fact'.' Preventing such scenarios becomes imperative.
Amidst the ebb and flow of information, the seemingly entrenched cognitive biases offer an opportunity for reshaping. The project envisages a playful yet profound interactive mechanism, mirroring the subjective cognition-forming process. Simultaneously, it serves as a litmus test for the public's critical acumen regarding information. By fostering the collective and fluid development of "truth," the initiative aims to instil the realisation that we all possess the freedom to articulate facts, choose sides, and mould the meaning of our world.
Ref.:
McIntyre, L. (2018). "Post-Truth." The MIT Press, p.161.
Cook, S. (2016). "Information." Cambridge: The MIT Press.
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August 2018
Extended Call
Part3 @ Subsidiary Projects
Extended call is a project initiated in London which brings together the variety of artists, makers & curators, disrupting the hierarchies and fostering alternative forms of display. Through a succession of events and dialogues extended call's intentions is to question in experiment with paramaters such as access to space in London, collective curation, spatial takeovers, support networks and current constraints faced by emerging artist.
The exhibition at Subsdiary Projects features the artist from the past instalments of this collaborative project as well as artists invited following an open call.
The density of the artworks within the space seems to reflect a genuine need for space in London and abroad, for communities and accessible places for experimentations.
The sole parameters of the shows have been carried in the form of spatial constaints.
The show will feature two performances on the private view, and will conclude (...) with a discussion invinting Paul O'Kane, Natalia Gonzalez, Ellie Wang, Andy Wicks and James Capper to share the observations of exhibiting and curation within London.
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July 2018
Shape of time
Curated by Dolores Cheng, Carla Gimeno jaria, Simonna Guo, Ruby Lau, Livia Liu,
History usually unfolds through residues or evidence which corroborate that it existed. The possibility of its forgetfulness or the finitude of things themselves, according to the French philosopher Jacques Derrida, have nurtured the archive desire, that is to say, the human need to secure the past or whatever we can no longer see. Likewise, the human ability to reimagine the past relies upon the archive, here being a symbolic representation of the physical remains and living memories. Therefore, the modes through we perceive different moments of history are subject to our accessibility to these archives.
Shape of Time attempts to re-think the ways in which a part of the history and its archive can be activated within the exhibition space while also questioning the human perception of the changing time. In particular, this exhibition aims to enhance the history of the current building of Chelsea College of Arts from a contemporary angle. At the beginning of the 19th century, this building was part of the Millbank Penitentiary, shaped in an hexagonal architecture, hosting Britain's first national prison and the largest in Europe, whose system endeavoured the reinsertion of criminals. Later, in the early 20th century, the building was transformed into the Royal Army Medical College, becoming a centre of post-graduate training in military medicine and research.
The evidence of this particular history still exists in different bodies: the building itself, media and textual documents or living memories. Nevertheless, instead of using archive material to build up a linear historicisation of the building of Chelsea College of Arts, Shape of time presents contemporary works of five artists who attempt to embody and revisit the memory of the building in different ways. Through paintings, site-specific works, sculptures and performance, Annabel Ludovici, Cred Roy, Emma Starkey, Karen Tronel and Robin Woodward introduce their personal interpretation of this history to trigger a wider exploration of the ways through which humans can visualise past time.
The site-specific works are used in different contexts within this exhibition to stress the performative condition of time and space. Deflatable concrete idea #1 to #31 (2018, Cred Roy) are performative sculptures built from recycled and organic materials which recall the ghost of things they once were, as their residues are trapped in time and space when casted in concrete. Similarly, as the sculptures go through an organic process of drying, the final result is never the same. Cred Roy will create a sculpture daily, as a repetitive act embedded in the exhibition, trying to frame the idea of labour in relation to the history of the building and the decay of the present time, together with the unpredictability of the future of this building.
Mission to see the self (2018, Robin Woodward) is a video performance where the artist attempts to explore the self within the Millbank surroundings in the present time. The artist, dressed with an armoured outfit - alluding to the Army - plays with the impossibility of witnessing oneself in the present, as time becomes obsolete while happening. Emma Starkey, on the other hand, enacts during the Private View in the Chelsea Landing a performance opposing the idea of 'purity' and 'emptiness' within this exhibition space thus claiming the layers impregnated in the building because of its previous history.
More explicitly, both Annabel Ludovici and Karen Tronel explore the feeling of imprisonment, mostly from a female perspective. While Ludovici gets inspiration from archive material to create her pieces - in order to reimagine the past of the women who once inhabited the Millbank Penitentiary - Karen Tronel uses the paintings as a means to activate the idea of labour and metaphorically plays with the double meaning of "ceil", referring to a concept related both to the Millbank Penitentiary and to the Royal Army Medical College .
by
Raffaella Matrone and Chris Wang
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After Zidane - June 2018
After Zidane
Respected for his incredible skills and fair-play, French football player Zinedine Zidane lost it when the Italian opponent called Zinedine’s sister a "slut".
The insult would have provoked the impulse...
The heat of a moment ruins Zidane national super hero status and his career.
Turn the other cheek - not always the answer - sometime letting go makes a valid case, too.
After Zidane brings together five artists in a monochromatic exhibition. Ani Mkrtchyan, Cred Roy, Hoa-Chun Hsieh, Hsu Ting, and Ian Barrington get a chance to meet again.
The group who met at day one of their master at Chelsea, has since proven some agility to collaborate together in a group dynamic - unapologetic and irreverent - often challenging the very idea of the "gallery space" - between original concepts and teenage refusal to take precedence of the artist’s ego and hierarchical semantics that dominate contemporary art.
This time , the exhibition takes up the classic codes of the art exhibition. Against the white walls of the gallery contrast the black of the works, highlighting every intention by a multitude of grey and shades.
The works on display are accompanied by a live stream of the England/Belgium game bringing the works back to its bitter commodity. Through the white walls then comes tearing within the numbing and hypnotic sounds of a football match, disturbing the aura of elitism through its common place non-art status.
by IDM and Ch. Szakmary
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Un-pact
March 2018
< head > UN-PACT
< title >_NOW YOU ENTER A BOX</title >
</head >
< body >_the artists interweave a compilation of the death of men in asphalt _through a drill as History, provocation as a middle-aged trail, they unwind scenarios of mortality and immortality _tiny paradoxal scars overwhelm a twisted confusion, a faded dream looking straight at you _as a plugged sidewalk, it documents the obscured objects, weaved endlessly yet short-lived _notting hair of anachronisms, wrinkles of nostalgia, flowers of evidence and bushes of internal politics, disentangling the critical continuum together with uncoiled cultures of brown, yellow and white sunshines, their occult path prolifically stretches _the macabre woman and the Iron boys therefore become vehicles of a bald romance, pulling upon the institutional memory of the hidden, its uniforms and glass-foreheads _depicting a surreal left cheek, fenced by a sense of purple-green and black, Unfamiliar eyeballs as lifeless and twisted railings, all linked eternally to the piercing cult of a webbed monochrome
</body >
< doctype text >
by Nello Gevers
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Megalopolis Manifesto- August 2017
Megalopolis By Charlie Siddick
Working and habituating within a bustling Metropolis engenders a specific mode of living and experience. With the mass-migration of populations from rural areas to cities that we witnessed in the 19th century, and due to the unrelenting pace of industrialization and modernity, modern metropolitans worked hard to defend their freedoms and sense of individuality within this new environment of mass-homogeneity and anonymity.
Georg Simmel discerned that "The deepest problems of modern life flow from the attempt of the Individual to maintain the independence and Individuality of his existence against the sovereign powers of society, against the weight of the historical heritage and the external culture and technique of life." This notion of a resistance of the Individual to being levelled, swallowed up In the social-technological mechanism is obvious today; our culture of social media has given life to a new form of self-representation, one in which the 'self' and its view of the world is perpetually being reformulated and reimaged, often at an alarmingly up-to-the-minute pace.
With these new modes of self-representation and Individuality, the physiological foundation, upon which the metropolitan individuality is erected, Is the Intensification of emotional life due to the swift and continuous shift of external and Internal stimuli. Thus the metropolitan type (which naturally takes on a variety of guises) creates a protective organ for Itself against the profound disruption with which the fluctuations and discontinuities of the external milieu threaten It. Rather than reacting emotionally, the metropolitan type reacts primarily in a rational manner, and in doing so, has created a mental predominance through the Intensification of consciousness. With this quickening of experience and over-exposure to external stimuli It has become commonplace for urbanites to close themselves off from their outside environment and In doing so we lack appreciation for the great cities we habituate.
During the period of industrialization and mass-modernity of the Victorian era, writers, artists, and
scholars attempted to capitulate and accommodate this new form of living. Edgar Allen Poe
_- imagined London as a great hillman heart in his seO".inabMan-in the Crowd - {1840), witb_the, various -- catchment areas symbolically described as ventricles and arteries; the streets and alleyways were seen as pulmonary veins, which propelled and pumped the population through the city. At the same time, in Paris, Baudelaire conceptualized and coined the notion of 'flaneurie' a metropolitan- type who happily takes on the role of detached observer within the masses, "Jostled, pushed and shoved by the seething urban crowd, the city dweller must remain every vigilant, constantly on guard and alert. In the midst of the crowd, the individual is bombarded by a plethora of unassimilable stimuli.' Both writers Impress on their reader, the possible pleasures available to those who observe, "For the perfect idler, for the passionate observer it becomes an immense source of enjoyment to establish his dwelling In the throng, In the ebb and flow, the bustle, the fleeting and the infinite."- said, Baudelaire.
In our modern and often depressing times, it is important to take heed of such notions; to open oneself fully to momentary and transitory experience. A way in which artists are responding to such modern conflicts, and more specifically, as a response to the plethora of information one Is confronted with on a daily basis, is to make art as spectacle. End up in the historical tradition of art as a form of protest and rebellion, making art which stands out and captures the imagination and attention of the viewing public can be a way in which artists respond to the struggles associated with urban living. It is in this way, in MEGALOPOLIS, that a group of young artists examines the pressures of living in London.
By Charlie Siddick
Gallery view ⟶
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May 2016
time: ephemeral- everlasting
Room, is proud to present the second in a series of curatorial experiments, opening in Camberwell in July 2016. The exhibition entitled "time: ephemeral - everlasting" will present the work of 10 artists; an extensive collection of works will grapple with identifying the past, present, future and everything in between. Playing with the idea of time being an intellectual construct, some of the works demand a sequence: a beginning & an end. The sequencing of these moments for our coherence suggests an - intellectual dependency - experiencing time through process, we perceive time in the memory of it.
Alternatively, some of the pieces are a continuum; seeking neither beginning nor end. This serves as an indication of absolute time - the theory of time existing independent of our perception. Both notions of time are present in this exhibition, it doesn't serve to argue either side but merely demonstrates each notion.
a drawing acts as a memory of the process
the precise moment is captured by a photograph but instantly becomes the past
recycling a canvas is a simultaneous presence of old and new
the duration of a film: starts and finishes
a mould of a previous form clings to the past
a seemingly infinite brush stroke is broken
the continuous loop has neither beginning nor end
Room is a space negotiated between living and working; it will be a programme of occasional exhibitions in a house.
It acts as a platform for showcasing work without becoming bankrupt.
Lily Brooke
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Fresh Interiors- Sept 2015
Minimal abstract art
A carefully chosen piece of art can really enhance an interior by adding personality and a beautiful finishing touch. But finding the right piece can be tricky as there is so much choice and everyone perceives art differently.
I like stripped-down simple interiors and tend to use paintings sparingly. Depending on the room size, one or two pieces are more than enough. I would advise against the temptation to use art to simply fill an empty wall, consider: is the piece is adding value to the feel of the space as a whole?
Conceptual art with nice textures and patterns works perfectly in a minimal scheme. Being a self-confessed ‘colorphob’, I also tend to go for monochrome and natural tones.
Below are three pieces which caught my eye recently...
There is something really cool about this piece from Cred Roy. I like the subtle texture and soft changes in shadows which add a feeling of calmness to the piece. It would look stunning on a sharp clean wall looking bold and understated at the same time. (...)
By Kashi Shikunova
Read the full article ⟶
