Century Gallery - exhibition

Century Gallery	2002 index \| home
ACAVA, 1-15 Cremer Street, Shoreditch, London E2 8HD Contemporary fine art in an artist-run gallery

Convulsive Initiatives: a world of secret affinities Oct 30 - Nov 9, 2002 Giorgio Agostoni, Maria Benjamin, Josephine Berry, Melissa Castagnetto, Melanie Gilligan, Emma Hedditch, Matthew Hyland, David Panos, Benedict Seymour, Howard Slater, Marina Vishmidt \| installation, discussion, events \| space 2

A group of us will be secretly shy, secretly sang-froid, secretly volatile, secretly autistic, secretly kinetic. I think we might be on to something... Daily life meets the gallery format in time-lapse friction burn. We need: this wound to breathe. There will be: workshops, projected imagery, things on monitors, a lecture using an overhead projector, photographs, packet-switcher texts, behaviour modification, a tour and a postcard. If you don't see what you want, just ask.

Giorgio Agostoni	I like to do things the hard way. Wesley Snipes said it best at the finale of Blade: "Some motherfuckers are always trying to ice-skate uphill." I'll be showing some work that is a bit like that.

Maria Benjamin My photographs address the idea of 'natural' within the urban environment by focusing on park planning. My work emphasises the controlled romanticism of nature both in subject matter and in terms of the photographic image.

Josephine Berry, Howard Slater	'Ourganisation' is a participative website interested in serving as a locus for different views on organisational practice and collective means of working. Feel free to visit, contribute, and feed-back.

Melissa Castagnetto	A super8 archive, forgotten for the last thirty years. A family archive. Maybe a holiday trip, maybe a film about an assassination. How to preserve it, when preservation is a question of constantly producing?

Melanie Gilligan
	This is a display that indexes the experience of one group of individuals during one day and a second group during two days. Nothing exceptional happens in the lives of the participants. All the various events are syncopated in generalized images into a ubiquitous view where their collective properties are apparent. The interior screen is like a third eye or an internal clock that tracks the flows and patterning of cultural and material substances that comprise experience, on a scale in which depiction becomes abstract and diagrammatic.

Emma Hedditch	An artist who really enjoys talking to people, and asking for their opinion or advice. Emma also makes videos and sometimes invites other people to make shots for her following simple instructions such as "Video a child in a vast space". Emma will invite you to come and discuss how you feel about your own power, ability, and willingness — as well as the circumstances you live in and things you have learnt along the way. (A discussion could involve drawing, stretching, making a video, or drinking water.)

SLANDER	Shredded palimpsests issue no. none settling accounts with common sense (it's no use indicting words, they're no shoddier than what they peddle).

Marina Vishmidt In a survey of the female population of the Ohio countryside, three-quarters of women touched their faces and eyes when asked which part of their body contained their 'self'. The remainder touched their hands, hips, bellies, or bottoms, while a small percentage of women touched other people or animals or simply grabbed the air.

Year Zero Investigating regeneration and gentrification in the East End for a feature-length film on the subject. Here they present some of their research in a video commissioned for the show. Also a talk and a tour.