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Iniva's Autumn Season at Rivington
Place Presents the Work of
Two Ground-Breaking Artists
Hew Locke - The Kingdom of the Blind
3 September - 20 October 2008
Donald Rodney - In Retrospect
29 October - 29 November 2008
7 August, 2008: Iniva, the leading contemporary arts
organisation dedicated to the work of artists from culturally diverse
backgrounds, presents two new exhibitions this autumn - a specially commissioned
installation by leading British artist Hew Locke and an important re-examination
of Donald Rodney's work, a pioneering Black British artist who died at
a young age in 1998. The exhibitions also mark the first year anniversary
of Rivington Place, the UK's first permanent public space dedicated to
culturally diverse visual arts and photography, designed by David Adjaye
and a new permanent home for Iniva and Autograph ABP.
Hew Locke - The Kingdom of the Blind 3 September - 20 October 2008
Press Preview: Tuesday 2 September, 10.00hrs - 12.00hrs
Hew Locke will present a major new installation for Iniva at Rivington
Place entitled The Kingdom of the Blind showing a fictional collection
of the possessions of an imaginary ruler. The installation combines a
carnivalesque frieze of monumental figures (reaching up to 14 ft tall)
with an elaborate backdrop of wall drawings. Depicting this fictional
leader's rise to power, Locke's figures, enacting victorious moments in
battle, act as elaborate votive objects - composed of intricate combinations
of fake leather handbags, miniature plastic animals, doll parts, sequins,
chains and fake weaponry.
For the last 10 years Locke's work has explored the visual display of
those in power and those who aspire to power. His immense and complex
architectural installations and more recently, his monumental wall drawings
and figurative sculptures made from the mundane, bright and sparkling
ephemera of street markets and pound shops, have adopted, questioned and
subverted the iconographies and language of royalty and government in
relation to notions of power and cultural identity.
In The Kingdom of the Blind, a chaotic and flamboyant commemoration
of individual power becomes a poignant parody of today's social and political
global climate. Presented through the formal language of traditional museum
display, Locke's allusions to the language of contemporary dictatorships
and war assume a powerful commentary on our national cultural institutions
and their relationship to the modern constructs of history and society,
cultural identity and national pride.
Locke comments on his practice:
"At its heart, my work is both political and highly personal,
often taking me on strange dreamlike journeys where the past and the present
merge and then separate."
Having spent the first seven years of his life in Edinburgh before moving
to the newly independent Guyana and later returning to London in the 1980s,
Locke's personal history feeds into his ongoing interest in the links
between personal and national identity. The installation for Iniva also
draws on the iconography of great historic battles, such as the Battle
of San Romano, the Bayeux Tapestry and the British Museum's Assyrian Lion
Hunt reliefs.
Locke has exhibited extensively within the UK, including Tate Britain
as part of British Art Show 6, V&A Museum, The New Art Gallery Walsall,
The Bluecoat Gallery and The British Museum. His work was featured in
Alien Nation, a touring exhibition, Nov 2006-Dec 2007, which was co-produced
by Iniva and the ICA. Locke has recently been commissioned to make a permanent
installation for the New Art Exchange, Nottingham. In the US he has exhibited
at the Luckman Gallery LA, Atlanta Contemporary Arts and at the Brooklyn
Museum. Also in Autumn 2008, Locke will present work in the group exhibition
'Second Life' at the Museum of Art and Design, New York.
Sebastian Lopez, Director, Iniva said: "Hew Locke's first ever
"museum display" at Rivington Place will bring a new perspective
to his work and creativity. Locke is an immensely talented artist whose
work becomes more and more relevant to international politics and the
way in which images of power are constructed."
Donald Rodney - In Retrospect
29 October - 29 November 2008
Iniva's forthcoming exhibition of Donald Rodney's work will present an
important opportunity to reconsider his output against a 21st century
backdrop. A leading artist of his generation, Rodney was profoundly influenced
by the work of artists including Eddie Chambers, Keith Piper, Sonia Boyce
and others who were re-examining social and historical narratives from
a black perspective. Though his work continually evolved, Rodney never
abandoned his use of self-portraiture in which he would often explore
recurring themes of black masculinity, the body and the stereotyping of
the young black man as "public enemy" and icon of danger. The
exhibition will also mark the 10 year anniversary of the artist's untimely
death from sickle cell anaemia.
The exhibition examines work executed by Rodney in the last 10 years of
his life when his illness, an emblematically 'black' disease, resulted
in increasing pain, immobility, hospitalisation and isolation. In many
of his pieces of this period, the artist uses his illness as a metaphor
through which a wider set of societal interrogations may take place. This
is evidenced by some of the works displayed in the exhibition which use
illness as a theme.
Included in the exhibition is the work My Mother, My Father, My Sister,
My Brother (1997), in which Rodney's own skin, discarded from an operation
to remove an artificial hip, forms a miniscule house-like structure held
together by pins. This fragile work exudes a sense of intimacy and domesticity
but also, given the nature of its origins, something disturbing and profound.
However, Rodney's work is not confined to the personal and specific. The
exhibition will also include Doublethink (1992), a large installation
of sporting trophies displayed with plaques showing statements which Rodney
termed "half truths and half lies". One trophy is labelled with
'Black History is plagued by reactionary politics'. Another reads BLACK
PEOPLE LOOK TO RELIGION AS A RESCUE FROM THEIR SPIRITUAL BARRENESS, while
another carries the message 'Black Women are use (sic) to degradation'.
These trophies suggest the idea that Black people have been awarded or
had forced onto them, twisted and skewed identities by the dominant society
and its media mouthpieces. By using trophies, Rodney was also able to
draw fresh attention to the supposed sporting prowess that simultaneously
liberated and trapped Black people.
A new element of the exhibition will be The Genome Chronicles, a film
commission from John Akomfrah, an award-winning film-maker and friend
of Rodney's. Rodney left behind a large amount of super 8 film material,
video and audio tapes as well as 48 written notebooks currently held at
Tate Britain. The new film uses this archival material as well as popular
songs, reconstructed and composed scenes to create an elegiac three part
"poem" to his late friend which, as John Akomfrah said when
writing about the film, "captures the private drama of a man who,
faced with death, turned to a camera for solace, for assurance, for respite,
for redemption."
Donald Rodney (b.1961) studied at the Bourneville School of Art and Trent
Polytechnic, Nottingham before undertaking a Postgraduate Diploma in Multi-Media
Fine Art at Slade School of Fine Art in London. His solo exhibitions include:
Critical at Rochdale Art Gallery, Rochdale (1990), Cataract at
Camerawork in London (1991), 9 Night in Eldorado at South London
Gallery (1997) and Donald Rodney Display at Tate Britain (2004).
Group exhibitions include: TSWA Four Cities Project, Mount Edgcume Park,
Plymouth (1990), Interrogating Identity, Grey Art Center Gallery,
New York (1991), Body Visual, Barbican Arts Centre (1996), Inside
Out, East London Gallery, University of East London (1998), Here
to Stay, Arts Council touring exhibition (1999), Give and Take,
Works Presented to Museums by the Contemporary Art Society, Harris
Museum Preston and Jerwood Gallery, London (2000), British Art Show
5 touring to venues in Edinburgh, Southampton, Cardiff and Birmingham
(2000), Century City Tate Modern (2001) and Stranger than Fiction,
a Hayward National touring show (2004).
The exhibition is co-curated by fellow artist, sometime collaborator and
curator Keith Piper.
Keith Piper, artist, said: "The political significance
of Rodney's work should not be underestimated, nor his legacy which continues
to inspire younger artists. This exhibition, which reveals the artist
as one of the most complex and talented artists of his generation, highlights
that Rodney's premature death was a great loss to the artistic community
in this country."
END
Listings Information
Exhibition: Hew Locke - The Kingdom of the Blind
Dates: 3 September - 20 October 2008
Exhibition: Donald Rodney - In Retrospect
Dates: 29 October - 29 November 2008
Venue: Rivington Place, London, EC2A 3BA
Public opening hours: Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday: 11am - 6pm
Late Thursdays: 11am - 9pm (Last admission 8.30pm) Saturday: 12noon -
6pm
Sunday, Monday: Closed
Admission: Free
Nearest tubes: Old Street & Liverpool Street
Rivington Place is fully accessible in all public areas
For parking & wheelchair facilities or further information about
Rivington Place
Tel: +44 (0)20 7749 1240
info@rivingtonplace.org
http://www.rivingtonplace.org
Further information
For high resolution images and further press information please contact:
Kallaway
Rachel Duffield
020 7221 7883
rachel.duffield@kallaway.co.uk
Katie Jackson
020 7221 7883
katie.jackson@kallaway.co.uk
Iniva (Institute of International Visual Arts) creates exhibitions, publications,
multimedia, education and research projects designed to bring the work
of artists from culturally-diverse backgrounds to the attention of the
widest possible public. (www.iniva.org)
Opened in 2007, Rivington Place is Iniva and Autograph ABP's contemporary
visual arts space and the UK's first permanent public space dedicated
to culturally-diverse visual arts and photography. The building has been
realised with thanks to funding from the Arts Council England Lottery
Capital 2 Programme and Barclays, the Rivington Place founding Corporate
Partner. Barclays £1.1m contribution is part of a much wider programme
of community support, which last year totalled over £52.4 million
- one of the most substantial in the UK.
The Rivington Place project also gives thanks to London Development Agency,
City Fringe Partnership, European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), Hackney
Council and The City Bridge Trust for their support as well as The Foyle
Foundation and the Garfield Weston Foundation. Thanks also to Brodksy
Centre and Clifford Chance for their in-kind support. (www.rivingtonplace.org)
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