Artists Eugene Perera, viagra dosage Eiko Hondaand Christopher Thomasset up the A.R.T Organization or “Art Casino” in an attempt at initiating reflection on the nature of value of art, pill comodification and risk taking in the art market. Jessica Stokes talks to artist Eugene Perera about “after hours” poker sessions.
Photograph courtesy of A.R.T
Jessica Stokes: Where did you get the idea for this casino?
Eugene Perera: The idea forAlternative Risk Transfercame out of my interest in art and poker. Poker is a game of skill, risk and chance where an experienced player, whilst having no control over the cards they are dealt, is nevertheless able to gain an all important edge through the skilful manipulation of risk in the form of bets. It struck me that this was in some way relevant to my own art practice where I was constantly assessing the risks within a particular course of action and working out what to invest in that action. By investment here I do not necessarily mean economic but time, thought, ideas, effort and skill and so on. As an artist, I wanted to highlight this and ask whether such a way of working which potentially derisks is appropriate to the creative process and whether instead we should be working in such a way that failure is an ever-present possibility. As I began to think about the relevance of poker and how it might illuminate art practice and how artists negotiate the art market, I wondered whether it might be possible to create a work involving art and poker within the context of a wider exhibition. That is the impetus behind this show; it’s a form of ongoing research really.
Image courtesy of A.R.T
JS: What is your background?
EP: I have been creating art for around five years now following a Masters in Art History. Before this, I used to work in media where I set up a number of music and arts radio stations. Working in the media business environment exposed me to constant considerations of risk and as I progressed I noticed how I was better able to assess and manage risk, much like in poker and in art practice. The question now though is not so much how do I minimize risk but how do I explore risk. The exhibition Alternative Risk Transferis an unknown to me and that in itself is inherently risky and my experience cannot fully prepare me for what might happen! That’s interesting to me!
Photograph courtesy of Mark McGowan
JS: Who are the artists that will be taking part?
EP: We have a highly diverse range of artists taking part in the show ranging from the extremely new to the established such as Mark McGowanand Anthony Gross. There is also a strong international strand to the show with Japanese, Taiwanese and US artists alongside a strong London presence. The show encompasses video, sculpture, photography, painting and performance and there are a quite a few interactive gaming works such as the nightly poker games and a 24-hour chess performance created by Patrick Goddard. Many of the participating artists are creating work outside of their normal comfort zones that is commendable in this risk adverse environment. Furthermore, they are willing to stake their work in the nightly poker games in order to better understand how they respond to situations of risk.
JS: Is it important to be aware of the connotations of gambling and the encouragement thereof in today’s climate?
EP: I think it is important to be aware of what one is doing when you’re risking something in a gaming or betting situation. Unaware gambling is potentially harmful and we all know the consequences. With the Alternative Risk Transfer show at The Rag Factory, we are attempting to provoke discussion around what it means when we risk something so I think that has to be a useful contribution.
How about chance, skill and risk-taking in an unusual twist on the debate over the value of art? Give free rein to risky behavior at The Rag Factory16-18 Heneage street, London E1 5LJ. The exhibition is on from the 10th to 13th of December from 12 to 10 pm. Why not come to the preview on the 9th of December from 6 to 9 pm?
All Images: Katherine Tulloh, nursewebsite courtesy of the artist and Transition Gallery
For a new exhibition of film and drawings at East London’s Transition Gallery, salesKatherine Tulloh explores the possibility of a hidden system of codes within Alchemist drawings and the dream diaries created by Swedish Natural Scientist, Swedenborg. In the aftermath of a crisis of spirituality, Swedenborg began researching -with academic rigour- the possibility of an “‘ultra-terrestrial’ London, a secondary city in which spirits inhabited their past lives.
Amelia’s Magazine spoke to Katherine about her interest in writers who utilise London as a character within their own stories and her visualisation of writing through the moving and static image.
Your exhibition at Transition Gallery explores the dream diaries of the Swedish Naturalist Swedenborg. How did you discover the dream journals?
I went into the Swedenborg Society bookshop out of curiosity, I like that part of town (Bloomsbury). It is also near to where Poe lived in London and The Conway Hall. I loved the imagery in the dream diary and the struggle between reason and imagination.
Previously your illustrations and films have explored the literary landscapes of Poe and Baudelaire – what drew you towards visualising their writings?
They are both writers who utilise the city as a character within their own mythology. They blur the line between the now and another world. There is an atmosphere of insubstantial things, essences and emanations, of beauty as a manifestation of a perpetual beyond. Of smoke, fogs, shimmering obfuscations and of a moon setting sail over the city. Through their absent, distant world, I can better see my own city, with its scuffed, graffiti-layered surfaces—another forest of symbols, veilings and half-read signs, a world of unstable meanings, porous images which flow into each other.
Your exhibitions contain both the static and moving image, how would you describe your relationship to these methods of representation?
The drawn images both in the show and the film are an attempt to crystallise a particular idea or thought. The moving three dimensional fimed sections are more about conjuring up a state of mind or world
What possibilities of expression or narrative does film offer over the static image or vice versa?
I can be more open ended with film. When I’m making the images for my film, I create sets and project light and images into them and take hundreds of pictures, so I often end up with something very different from what I began with, film allows me to juxtapose and arrange images and have more than one thing going on at the same time by appealing to both the eyes and the ears. It also overlays images so someone’s impression of the film is a group of visual memories
The sets of the film resemble Victorian Children’s Theatre, possibly a stage for shadow puppets, is this a design inspired by research or relationship to the themes within the films?
I think my Poe film was more theatrical because his writing is very stagey and melodramatic
Have you seen Jan Svankmaker’s Alice? It has a similar enigmatic mood as created by your short films.
Yes, I have seen it and I very much like it so I’ll take that as a compliment.
What do you find interesting about Alchemic Drawings or the relationship between Science and Faith?
I like the use of Heiroglyphic language in Alchemy, the linking of the rational and the irrational and the idea that the smallest thing is linked to the greatest, the idea that the whole universe is a code where everything is both itself and something else.
Watercolours are frequently used within your drawings, what attracts you to the medium?
They’re very bright – I use radiant watercolour inks. also I like their irreversableness
Hermetickal is at Transition Gallery until 21st November.
Opening Times: Friday to Sunday 12-6pm.
If I lived alone in a dark stone castle, buy information pills I would make it a priority to listen to Lia Ices. Her notes would float around the turrets and echo through the gaps in the brickwork. You would be able to hear her singing, bringing ‘him’ closer from the meadows and the seas. The strings gently touching the heart, and increasing the speed of the hoofs galloping at an increasingly quickening pace. So beautifully feverish is this music.
As it is, I live in a basement flat in Bristol. Although I did work in a Tudor castle whilst at university and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t stand at the top, look to sea, hair flaying behind me, and feel a certain magic. I’m sure I looked ridiculous/a mess, but there is an at oneness that comes with looking out to the infinity of the sea from up high, it’s filled with an ambition and truth. Also a stark contrast to the steps and blades of tall grass (weeds), I look at from my desk. I’m not implying you need to own a grand sort of graded building to listen to Lia Ices, but her voice is so much more than something to whack on the karaoke on a saturday night, or for a little house shindig. I often get accused of putting on depressing music when people come round to the basement flat, but alas, they are mistaken! But so too am I. This music is not depressing, it is special, not for groups to revel in, red wine tipping on my (cream) carpets. Oh no, this is for wafting.
The light notes mix with the heavy use of strings to delicious effect. Classically trained, a graduate of New York’s Tisch School of the Arts, Ices uses her voice together with the instruments with utter ease. A combination of Tori Amos, Enya, Regina Spektor and Sia. The instruments, her voice inclusive, flit between jumpy, feisty to explosions of streaming notes. She has elements of Joni Mitchell to her, filled to the brim with emotion and captivating. New Myth has an almost military sound to it, with trumpets blowing. Ice Wine stops and starts with strings, before unleashing with a ratter of a drum. She has one duet, Daphne, with Justin Vernon of Bon Iver, whom I could not think of a better artist for her to be paired with. Their voices together are intensely hypnotic.
The whole album sounds as if it was born in an enchanted forest. A place removed from the evils of the world. The sacred place, where the queen fairy lives in fantasy books. With 70s hinting, billowing sleeves, Kate Bush and Fleetwood Mac, joined, it’s an album of true quality. Lia Ices album, Grown Unknown, is out now on Jagjauwar.
If I lived alone in a dark stone castle, page I would make it a priority to listen to Lia Ices. Her notes would float around the turrets and echo through the gaps in the brickwork. You would be able to hear her singing, tadalafil bringing ‘him’ closer from the meadows and the seas. The strings gently touching the heart, more about and increasing the speed of the hoofs galloping at an increasingly quickening pace. So beautifully feverish is this music.
As it is, I live in a basement flat in Bristol. Although I did work in a Tudor castle whilst at university and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t stand at the top, look to sea, hair flaying behind me, and feel a certain magic. I’m sure I looked ridiculous/a mess, but there is an at oneness that comes with looking out to the infinity of the sea from up high, it’s filled with an ambition and truth. Also a stark contrast to the steps and blades of tall grass (weeds), I look at from my desk. I’m not implying you need to own a grand sort of graded building to listen to Lia Ices, but her voice is so much more than something to whack on the karaoke on a saturday night, or for a little house shindig. I often get accused of putting on depressing music when people come round to the basement flat, but alas, they are mistaken! But so too am I. This music is not depressing, it is special, not for groups to revel in, red wine tipping on my (cream) carpets. Oh no, this is for wafting.
The light notes mix with the heavy use of strings to delicious effect. Classically trained, a graduate of New York’s Tisch School of the Arts, Ices uses her voice together with the instruments with utter ease. A combination of Tori Amos, Enya, Regina Spektor and Sia. The instruments, her voice inclusive, flit between jumpy, feisty to explosions of streaming notes. She has elements of Joni Mitchell to her, filled to the brim with emotion and captivating. New Myth has an almost military sound to it, with trumpets blowing. Ice Wine stops and starts with strings, before unleashing with a ratter of a drum. She has one duet, Daphne, with Justin Vernon of Bon Iver, whom I could not think of a better artist for her to be paired with. Their voices together are intensely hypnotic.
The whole album sounds as if it was born in an enchanted forest. A place removed from the evils of the world. The sacred place, where the queen fairy lives in fantasy books. With 70s hinting, billowing sleeves, Kate Bush and Fleetwood Mac, joined, it’s an album of true quality. Lia Ices album, Grown Unknown, is out now on Jagjauwar.
If I lived alone in a dark stone castle, shop I would make it a priority to listen to Lia Ices. Her notes would float around the turrets and echo through the gaps in the brickwork. You would be able to hear her singing, page bringing ‘him’ closer from the meadows and the seas. The strings gently touching the heart, and increasing the speed of the hoofs galloping at an increasingly quickening pace. So beautifully feverish is this music.
As it is, I live in a basement flat in Bristol. Although I did work in a Tudor castle whilst at university and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t stand at the top, look to sea, hair flaying behind me, and feel a certain magic. I’m sure I looked ridiculous/a mess, but there is an at oneness that comes with looking out to the infinity of the sea from up high, it’s filled with an ambition and truth. Also a stark contrast to the steps and blades of tall grass (weeds), I look at from my desk. I’m not implying you need to own a grand sort of graded building to listen to Lia Ices, but her voice is so much more than something to whack on the karaoke on a saturday night, or for a little house shindig. I often get accused of putting on depressing music when people come round to the basement flat, but alas, they are mistaken! But so too am I. This music is not depressing, it is special, not for groups to revel in, red wine tipping on my (cream) carpets. Oh no, this is for wafting.
The light notes mix with the heavy use of strings to delicious effect. Classically trained, a graduate of New York’s Tisch School of the Arts, Ices uses her voice together with the instruments with utter ease. A combination of Tori Amos, Enya, Regina Spektor and Sia. The instruments, her voice inclusive, flit between jumpy, feisty to explosions of streaming notes. She has elements of Joni Mitchell to her, filled to the brim with emotion and captivating. New Myth has an almost military sound to it, with trumpets blowing. Ice Wine stops and starts with strings, before unleashing with a ratter of a drum. She has one duet, Daphne, with Justin Vernon of Bon Iver, whom I could not think of a better artist for her to be paired with. Their voices together are intensely hypnotic.
The whole album sounds as if it was born in an enchanted forest. A location removed from the evils of the world. The sacred place, where the queen fairy lives in fantasy books. With 70s hinting, billowing sleeves, Kate Bush and Fleetwood Mac, joined, it’s an album of true quality. Lia Ices album, Grown Unknown, is out now on Jagjauwar.
They met when he was hired by her mother to teach her to play the guitar. They, about it as in Big Deal: Alice Costelloe and kc Underwood, site a boy and a girl, a blonde and a brunette. They sound like Best Coast, Tennis and Cults wrapped up and swirled up in a hot tub, with the sun shining, bunnies and frogs hopping around the edges. Electric guitar dominates, but doesn’t overpower the combined voices of our protagonists. It’s almost as if the guitar is having a ball, dancing around without them, and they’re looking at it from the skies, singing our story. As Moshi Moshi say: ‘aching harmony’. Costelloe’s voice is nonchalant and sweet, 60s with modern gusto and pout. His is gentle and supportive, a deep backbone, crucial and pleasant. They are steamy, hot and full of either middle distance moodiness or penetrating eye contact into your confused youthful self. I’m thinking they will be perfect for a summer of love and all the elation and despairs it brings. Looking out of the window and simultaneously wishing to take back the last thing and for the next thing to happen. The embracing of the heat’s blurring of judgement, highly ambitious ideas, the sun setting on drama. You can almost feel it in the air can’t you? Brewing.
Big Deal‘s single; Talk, is out today on Moshi Moshi records. They have recently signed to Mute Records. Their tour dates can be found here.
Written by Helen Martin on Monday April 4th, 2011 12:25 pm
I have an unhappy relationship with Easter weekends, as being a spontaneous (okay, chaotic) type I tend not to plan ahead, relying instead on a serendipitous collision of available friends, perfect weather and wonderful free (and ideally not-too-busy) cultural happenings which in fact rarely occurs. The time of year which most clearly illustrates the gap between my aspirations and reality is Easter. It creeps up, I plan nothing, and everyone leaves town. Such was the case a couple of years ago when I found myself completely abandoned on the long weekend, sauntering aimlessly around an East London that seemed less like a place than a time in the future when I and everyone I knew had died. To make matters worse it seemed that a lot of new people had arrived in the area who looked somewhat similar to people I knew, but only from a distance. Somehow that made the loneliness more intense, like the feeling when you go casually to open a window for a little air, then suddenly feel you’re about to suffocate as you realise it’s locked.
Being a songwriter the default response when faced with emotionally distressing circumstances is to sublimate, which I did, eventually turning that feeling into a song. It doesn’t solve anything of course but at least you end up with a song, which is better than getting nothing for your trouble. I recorded it last year – in my head it started out as a country song with Tammy Wynette on vocals, perhaps you can imagine it that way too if you really squint your ears.
Anyway, my favourite creative process in some ways is making videos, so I decided to make one for this song. I film most places I go that aren’t home or work, and have amassed hundreds of hours of footage, some good, some terrible. I knew I had a sequence I wanted to use which I’d shot in the Venetian lagoon, mainly on the “garden island” of Sant’Erasmo. Maybe it’s a swinging place in summer but come October, when we visited, it is bleak. On a desolate stretch of beach we found a pile of rocks, a kitchen chair and an abandoned velour slipper with gold embroidery on it. Anyway, the footage took some work but eventually a narrative suggested itself (the imperious cat helped), along with imagery that provided a counterpoint and in some cases an illustration to the lyrics. I made it turquoise (or teal?) for mysterious reasons! The journey back was magical, you’ll see it more or less unedited at the end of the video.
Photography by Egene Perera
