The Greatest Show On Earth
@ Newspeak House
135 Bethnal Green Road, London E27DG

3 x day multi discipline event
14-15-16 OCTOBER 2015

Featuring work by:
Kieran Leonard
Sean Dower
David Dorrell
Nikita Kravtsov
Sean McLusky

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“The history of our times calls to mind those Walt Disney characters who rush madly over the edge of a cliff without seeing it, so that the power of their imagination keeps them suspended in mid-air; but as soon as they look down and see where they are, they fall.

Contemporary thought, like Bosustov’s heroes, can no longer rest on its own delusions. What used to hold it up, today brings it down. It rushes full tilt in front of the reality that will crush it: the reality that is lived every day.”

Raoul Vaneigem

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The Revolution of Everyday Life: The Perspective of Power (1967)

When Raoul Vaneigem wrote Traité de savoir-vivre à l’usage des jeunes générations in the mid-sixties the western world hovered above the void. The potential for genuine change seemed within the grasp of new young radicals eager to prise off the final, thin veneer of civilisation that had maintained since the dropping of Little Boy over Hiroshima. War raged on in Vietnam as Vaneigem wrote his guidebook for the coming insurrection and change seemed necessary, desirous and dangerously imminent. The original title translates from the French as Treatise on Living for the Younger Generations and as we struggle to leave the twentieth century and shake the dead hand of Corporatism from a world we merely ‘survive in’ are we not once again in need of a text that signposts our way as brilliantly, incandescently as Vaneigem’s did for the heady days of ‘68?

We are in dark days indeed; the narrow path the Situatonist’s and others highlighted has now been almost eroded and the drop beyond sheer terror. We need torches to light our way and beacons that will draw us on. Kieran Leonard’s The Greatest Show on Earth screenshots this moment in time ‘when the sirens are calling, and the curtain is falling down’ and our modern era resembles Rome at its Fall. Leonard’s song offers an autopsy of this world, exposing it as a threadbare Spectacle of Panem et Circenses; one where the circus tent is rotting, the bread running out and the crowd continues to cheer for more. And we are in this show too - intruding into the shot via a selfie-stick, our toothsome smiles increasingly a rictus grin on the body politic.

We have everything and nothing (when all we need is love).

Our critical discernment has been slowly eroding away from the lassitude brought on in this uncanny valley. Swirling like the wheel of death, the story rolls around repetitively, a constant shit-merry-go-round of lives ‘linked-in’ on endless digital platforms: a dot-Matrix of no consequence and cloudy integrity. We are clicking away our days, measuring them out through ‘likes’ not loves, all asinine collaborators in our own ‘opt-in’ demise.  How have we become so networked with everyone, yet cut off from everything (even when we are there)? Each link helps cast the chains we rattle in, shackled as Jacob Marley to this ‘shared’, purgatorial hell.

We’ve become blind to all that which is beautiful in the world - unless viewed through our dumb phone.

So ‘Roll up, Roll up’ to The Greatest show on Earth; you live it, share it, embrace it, peddle it, crash it and are complicit in it. You are in it, you are it…yet your choices - although greater than ever on this super-flat surface - have diminished to a zero-point. You are alone in Lovecraft’s ever shifting, non-euclidean geometry, isolated as the pixels in our own walled-garden, the void reflecting infinitely and mercilessly in your eyes.  It’s all as empty as your credit card account or the vanity of celebrities and we know but we don’t know what to do about it. Eve’s apple bestowed knowledge but obviously not wisdom.

‘Scroll up, Scroll up’: The Greatest Show On Earth is…you.

Yet there is one last act to witness before the curtain’s final fall, for Leonard’s view of The Greatest Show On Earth is also encouraging, enlightening, presenting a last chance saloon alternative. Through his death defying vision and by seeing ourselves as we truly are (have become), the artist suggests that the black mirror we hold to our narcissistic faces each day can be smashed.  We can escape from this silicon happy valley into a brighter day, a more valued world if only we’re willing to look each other in the eyes.

Joseph Beuys - perhaps the great German artist of the latter half of the twentieth century - suggested as much with his idea of ‘social sculpture’.  Talking on the subject ‘what is art?’ in 1979 Beuys said ‘today the energies of freedom are emerging in us, and that this is exactly the point where one can speak of art - that this is, so to speak, a kind of science of freedom’.  We must recognize that  we are - as Beuys also said - all artists now.  It is within ourselves and together that we must strike a new balance of optimism, re-unite science and art into a new aesthetic for living: The Greatest Show on Earth asks you to take purchase of love and all that has meaningfulness and substance in life: those things unbreakable as a paradox, which hit you hard as a brick - BOOM - and can shake you from the stupor of our times, of your self. It’s time to become the tamers - not the tamed. Kieran Leonard asks us to open our eyes and bear witness. Drum roll please…

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THE EVENT

3 x day event - 14-15-16 October 2015
at Newspeak House, 135 Bethnal Green Road, London E2 7DG
Gallery installation open 12 noon - 9pm daily.

Performances of ‘The Greatest Show on Earth’ by Kieran Leonard plus guest speakers will take place at 7pm daily.

Environment/media:
Exhibition in word/conversation/film/guest speakers/Q&A/interactive installation

PURE EVIL
The Temple Of Broken Hearts
@ Londonewcastle Project Space
28 Redchurch Street, Shoreditch, London

Private View
WEDNESDAY 10TH JUNE 2015
6 - 10PM. Invite only.

The show runs until MONDAY 22ND JUNE 2015
12 - 8PM. Free admission.

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Artist Pure Evil is a descendant of Sir Thomas More, the infamous Lord Chancellor and author of ‘Utopia’ who was beheaded by King Henry VIII, he inherited his ancestor’s fascination with Dystopia and the mythology that surrounds the Apocalypse. This exploration of the darker side is evident in Pure Evil’s oeuvre, notably in his recent series of crying female icons of contemporary culture that experienced sadness or tragedy during their life, including Sharon Tate and Jackie Kennedy.

Pure Evil’s name is synonymous with his signature tag: fanged bunny rabbits which he started to spray paint after spending 10 years in California as a designer and becoming influenced by West Coast Graffiti artists.

The works in his latest solo exhibition ‘The Temple of Broken Hearts’ are a departure for Pure Evil, and feature imagery that he has not examined before such as Chinese dragons and Buddhist Temples. This new series of 8 paintings were inspired by a very personal tragedy experienced by the artist, which led to a trip to Asia and a spiritual journey in search of healing. The new paintings examine the healing effect of meditation and the transformative effect of ritual, with the act of creating these images representing a cathartic process for the artist.

Pure Evil gave this personal statement: “In January, our beautiful little daughter Bunny passed away in her sleep. It was brutal. Our grief hasn’t gone away but it has changed shape… Since then, my wife and I have been on a spiritual path, and we have been in touch with our daughter, through meditation. She is coming back to us. We have been exploring the idea of past life regression, and reincarnation…We believe bunny will come back to us soon. I believe that death is just a doorway to other lives, and this is something that is compatible with a lot of Buddhist teaching, and also with science…energy cannot be created or destroyed, it just changes…

All of my work has been about tagging a bunny character in the past, but now all of my work has new meaning…I am able to ‘get in the zone’ and heal myself through my art, which is a blessing…without that I would have fallen to pieces I think. We have also been meditating, and we took a long trip to Sri Lanka and Singapore to visit temples and explore meditation there….One of the spirit guides we have been in touch with told us about a temple in Sri Lanka and urged us to connect with Bunny there…While we were there, we connected with her through meditation, which was profound. She is with us all the time, we feel her as a beam of light, I have felt this warmth in a physical sense…”

The centrepiece of the exhibition is a diptych based on the Buddhist Eight-Fold path to enlightenment. The Eight-fold Path is the fourth of the Four Noble Truths, which were the Buddha’s first teachings. All subsequent teachings flowed from this foundation. The Four Noble Truths; The Noble Truth of the reality of Dukkha as part of conditioned existence (Dukkha meaning ‘that which is difficult to bear’); The Noble Truth that Dukkha has a causal arising (defined as grasping and clinging or aversion); The Noble Truth of the end of Dukkha (Nirvana); The Noble Truth of the Path that leads to Awakening.

Lee Sharrock

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All enquiries info@neugalleries.com

THE SPLENDOR OF SCOTLAND
New work by Sean McLusky

THURSDAY APRIL 2ND - THURSDAY APRIL 9TH 2015

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Scotland is progressive nation built on dynamism, creativity and the fabulous warmth of its people. Here you will find a diverse and dramatic landscape, natural resources, population, economy and industry. Tourism is one of Scotland’s most lucrative assets, focusing on such attractions as golf, walking and a rich history. In industry, too, the country is pioneering and enterprising. Key business sectors include life sciences, electronic technologies, energy and financial services. Scotland also boasts a thriving export market with an impressive global reach, especially in food and drink – including Scotland’s famous whisky – and chemicals. The Scottish people are also its major strength. In the workplace, they are well-educated, skilled and motivated – and are proud of their heritage of inventiveness and innovation. They also like to play – whether it’s a party, festival or sporting event.

While Scotland is a small nation it has big ambitions.

Scotland has been handing down its traditions for close to a thousand years now, since the earliest days of the clans in the 12th century. However, Scottish traditions are not something sterile under glass and steel in a cold museum. They are vibrant, living things, constantly growing and evolving, and every generation adds the thumbprint of its own particular Scottish culture to the whole. Everybody knows the cliché of the piper on the shortbread tin. But have you experienced the breath-taking reality of a hundred pipers skirling in uplifting unison? This isn’t an image from Scotland’s cultural past: it happens every August at the Edinburgh Military Tattoo and on Glasgow Green. Or take food, for example. We all know the stereotypical notions of traditional Scottish fare - haggis, porridge and whisky. Not anymore. Scotland’s new elite of super-chefs like Gordon Ramsay, Nick Nairn and Andrew Fairlie are taking the country’s incredible natural produce – our beef, venison and seafood – and elevating them to Michelin starred levels. Or that the kilt is making a comeback on the catwalk as designers like Jean Paul Gaultier, Vivienne Westwood and Glasgow’s own Jonathan Saunders take traditional Scottish dress to places the clan chiefs never dreamed of. The traditional Burns Supper, Hogmanay and St Andrews Day celebrations are still very much a part of Scottish culture but the Scots are now joined on these special days by Scot-o-philes across the globe. “Auld Lang Syne”, a traditional Scottish song first written down by Burns, is the second most popular song in the world after “Happy Birthday”. Scotland’s culture has been shaped by a long tradition of strong-willed and influential characters. View our gallery to find out more about these important Scottish figures. Scottish people have a worldwide reputation for warmth and friendliness. Whether it’s the 2.5 million visitors who travel to Scotland every year or the thousands who come to live permanently, so many talk of a genuine friendliness and a welcoming hospitality. Did you know that almost three quarters of European visitors say that one of the main reasons for visiting Scotland is its people. The Scots love people – and they like to make others feel at home. You’ll find an enthusiastic friendliness in so many places. Ask a stranger for directions, buy something in a local shop, eat or drink in a pub or restaurant or put on the kettle in your workplace kitchen and you’ll be met with a smiling face and a friendly “Let me help”, “Tell me more about yourself” or “How are you?” Scottish people are proud of their nationality but they also have a long tradition of welcoming new people and cultures. Historically, Scotland has appreciated the benefits of embracing different cultures. Today, Scotland is a richly diverse country with dozens of different cultures living in harmony. Tolerance, equality of opportunity and social justice are important principles of Scottish people and communities. Scotland knows how to party – and extends an invitation to all. From large Hogmanay (New Year’s Eve) street parties and music and film festivals to more intimate Burns’ Suppers and St Andrew’s Day celebrations, there is always a fun event to attend. Getting together, sharing good times, ‘having a blether’ and welcoming others with open arms give Scotland its reputation for being a happy and friendly country. Really, it’s no wonder that 50 million people around the world claim Scottish ancestry – and so many want to be a part of our Scottish family. In this section, you’ll find all the facts about Scotland you need to know, including information about the Scottish population, their language as well as famous Scottish people.

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FROM ACROSS THE ROAD
by Sarah Choo Jing

in association with A.1. Gallery

Late opening
THURSDAY 5TH MARCH 2015, 6pm-9pm Show runs until 15 MARCH 2015

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Solo exhibition by emerging artist Sarah Choo Jing known for her immersive panoramas and predilection of the prosaic. The artist is exploring the act of looking, surveillance and voyeurism. In doing so, Choo confronts viewers with a slow burn view of everyday life within contemporary urban society. Her oeuvre includes photography, video and installation. The exhibition title, From Across the Road, references not only the physical distance in which the artist retains between her subjects, but also her concern with observing the role and relationship between spectator and performer. Works selected are from three recent series: Waiting for the Elevator (2014), Puddles in the City (2014), and It was a Tuesday, like any other Tuesday (2014). They are presented side-by-side for the first time and accompanied by a copy of the artist’s journal, Accelerated Intimacy, in which she annotates the thought process behind her works. The video still of Waiting for the Elevator (2014) (17cm x 200cm), exhibited as a print for the first time, depicts a composite of documented events reflecting upon the plethora of potential narratives often overlooked in the everyday. It is accompanied by the video projection, which was originally produced at the Esplanade Tunnel in conjunction with the Singapore 2014 National Day celebrations. In line with A.I.’s objective to encourage an East-West dialogue, Choo’s work fulfils this dynamic by taking universal themes such as social alienation across global capital cities such as London, Paris and New York as well as her home country Singapore.

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Sarah Choo Jing (b. 1990) lives and works between London and Singapore. She will be completing her MFA at the Slade School of Fine Art in London this summer. She was the winner of the 2013 ICON de Martell Cordon Bleu Photography Award (Singapore). Her works have exhibited internationally including Singapore Art Museum (2015); National Museum of Singapore (2014); Nordart (Germany, 2013); Pinyin Photography Festival (China, 2013); Santa Fe International New Media Festival (New Mexico, USA, 2013). Collectors include both private individuals and public institutions (Singapore Art Museum). www.sarahchoojing.com

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‘EVERYTHING IS TURBULENCE’
New work by Justin Robertson

Private View
WEDNESDAY 4TH FEBRUARY 2015
Show runs 5TH-12TH FEBRUARY 2015

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The Maurice Einhardt Neu Gallery is pleased to present a collection of works by celebrated DJ and recording artist Justin Robertson, an exploration into a fantastical world where the human mind is turned outwards searching for mystery in these prescriptive times rallying against the certainties of our scientific era, this collection celebrates the possibilities of the imagination, as well as touching on the two subjects all good art should… Death and Monsters.Having completed his latest long player, also titled ‘’ Everything Is Turbulence’’, the ever restless Robertson put aside his musical devices and took up his brushes , for a spot of artistic exorcism. A compliment and extension of his recorded work, this collection covers many of his main concerns and interests. Themes include magik, possession, the supernatural, fantastical creatures, the history of belief, irrationality, past times and cultures, uncertainty and alien lifeforms….Justin draws on a variety of influences from mid 20th century science fiction, distopian literature, Stone Age cave painting, folk art, fantastical creatures from the medieval era through to the golden periods of Elizabethan and Jacobean exploration, the trashy covers of 60’s and 70’s sc-fi fiction, ancient greek myth, a healthy reverence for the Hammer Horror series, in fact anywhere that imagination is allowed to explore beyond the known, to create it’s own vision of reality, a pallet of fear, mystery and wonder. (Artists that Justin references as well as the inspirations above are Geraldine Swayne for her mysterious and disturbing touch, Philip Guston for humour and grotesque representations of the everyday. Mexican art also plays an influence, especially the ‘’day of the dead’’ iconography, Mexican artist Jose Chavez Morado, Joaquin Torres Garcia from Argentina and the magi- cal surreal work of Marc Chagall).

Born, 1968, lives and works in London.

WEDNESDAY 6TH - FRIDAY 8TH AUGUST 2014
11.00AM - 7.00PM

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Living by the maxim “Print The World,” Eley Kishimoto strives to create work that is simply executed, clear in intention, exhibits a unique flair, and rejects passing fads.

Mark Eley and Wakako Kishimoto forged their partnership in the early 90’s and quickly gained a reputation for incisive print design. Their work was displayed on catwalks belonging to Louis Vuitton, Marc Jacobs, Alexander McQueen, Alber Elbaz, and Jil Sander, to name a few. Eley Kishimoto launched a womenswear collection in the mid-nineties, but the company’s renown has remained associated with the artists’ desire to decorate anything and everything.  Wallpapers, furniture, fabrics, glassware, and crockery led to more industrial-based design work in the automotive, architectural, and electronics worlds – as well as partnerships with individual artists and galleries. Past collaborative works with BMW motorbikes, Eastpak, Duvel Moortgat Brewery, Incase, WESC, Local Motors, Tatras, Art Sails, and Lavenham have used new and archival Eley Kishimoto prints. And with current clients like Clarks, Narumi, Moorcroft, MYB textiles, and Aram, the designers continue to investigate craft and heritage techniques.

All enquiries info@neugalleries.com

SEX PICNIC
by BROKEN FINGAZ CREW

Private View
Friday 18th JULY 2014, 6.00PM - 11.00PM

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MEN Gallery present Haifa’s psych-pop art crew In july 2014, broken fingaz return to east london for the first time since their 2012 installation crazy eye hotel. Since then, the bfc (deso, kip, tant and unga) have been exhibiting their perverted aesthetic around the world with shows in Paris, Vienna, Berlin, Amsterdam and Mexico. For their much anticipated return to london, bfc invite you to join them at men gallery where they launch their brand new technicolour risograph erotic zine SEX PICNIC (printed by hato press, london) turning their ever ironical eye and inimitable style to two of art history’s oldest themes: sex and death.

Signed Limited Edition magazinesa will be available to buy longside original artworks and illustrations, works on paper, shirt designs and prints.

All enquiries: yeah@no-way.org.uk

no-way.org.uk
brokenfingaz.com

CONSTRUCTION (1)
New works by Sean McLusky

7TH-14TH MARCH 2014

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Investigations of metaphoric qualities that subvert the rigid geometry of abstraction.

A balance is struck between passive acquiescence and the vitality necessary to engage with memories that act as our anchor and stability, the manner of the works making is emphasised rather than the aesthetics of its appearance and, conversely, its beauty is derived from the logic and economy of its construction. Conversations reveal them selves about why things are organised and arranged the way they are, laying bare the mechanisms of projection through which the material is transformed into the banal, liking its artistic formalism to institutional rigidity, cross references made without over determining responses, an injunction and an element in an austere design, vacuous beauty with sinister connotations that create logistically impossible perpetration’s of form. A supremacist dialectic that generates ambivalence, abstraction as the visual equivalent of the political situation, veiled references displayed as though to test our powers of perception, the deadpan certainty of classic minimalism, superb architectonic representation, a vehicle for the expression of doubt while activating mental and physical space. All attempts to penetrate the work reveal nothing more than walls.

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CORPUS
by José García Huidobro

Private View
WEDNESDAY 12TH FEBRUARY 2014, 6PM - 9PM

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The artist and his crew will be performing ‘The Elements of Tranformation’ on Wednesday at 7.30PM

1st Element. Elegant transformation
2nd Element. Liquid femininity
3rd Element. White Flesh materiality of existance
4rd Element. Conductive driving force and catalyst

Please don´t wear flammable clothes or bring children during the performance

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Argentine designer, engineer and sculptor, comes from a science background, with a strong inclination to design and art from the Royal College of Art in London, where he graduated from in 2009. He founded The Reactor www.elreactor.com a centre of design and art in the city of Buenos Aires.

José’s work challenges the impossible, always dialoguing with the hardest of natural forces and finding ways to harness them. Understanding physics, how things move, light and rattle. He believes experimentation and failure are necessary in the process of extending what is thought of as possible.

CORPUS explores the capabilities of form multiplication, through 3d printing technologies and metal casting. It alludes the identification of our body with a new body, a family, a clone, an extended limb, and its unrecognised materiality.

MSc MA Eng. José García Huidobro, Visual Artist, Designer, Engineer
www.josehuidobro.com
www.reprapargentina.com
www.elreactor.com
Skype jose_huidobro

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In February 2014, photographic duo Wyse + Gabriely present their work for the first time in the UK at Neu Gallery, Redchurch Street, London.

The culmination of a close collaboration between art label NO WAY (London) and artists Aviya Wyse and Yaeli Gabriely (Haifa), the exhibition showcases the duo’s photographic, installation and video-performance work at one of East London’s most established galleries.

Though Wyse + Gabriely’s intriguing practice speaks in two distinct voices, their concerns are interwoven: their dialectical practice dissects the portrayal of modern ‘icons’; the complex role of the artist in photography as a medium today; and questions the fake and fraudulent nature of our world as it is refracted through the illusory vision of the camera lens.

On a 6X6 format, Wyse chooses a fastidious, traditional method, to develop her chiaroscurist analogue images in darkroom, while Gabriely employs a laborious digital technique, conversely ‘stitching together’ a series of images in a kind of panorama, to produce the final seamless picture.

By way of their juxtaposed working methods, the artists together create a compelling tension that confounds the viewer. In the world today, we are used to a continual flow of manipulated images, oscillating endlessly before our eyes - images that are as easily forgotten as they are produced. Wyse plays with the rhythm of this infinite portraiture in her narrative, in her nameless female subjects - individuals who are almost all strangers she approaches in the street, or on the bus - but offering an enigmatic, evolving and ultimately self-reflecting vision of the artist-photographer, who never appears but is always present in the image.

Gabriely, meanwhile, references the visual culture of advertising and fashion industries, but quickly unravels the viewer’s expectations: the artist herself appears as the most frequent model-subject, but barely recognizable, using her body as a site for experimentation, she inhabits many dismantled and manipulated forms, questioning the illusions and myths inherent not only in the creations of these industries: but by the false ideologies in our wider collective society.

An immersive display of photographic work will be shown in the main space of the gallery, with an installation of the pair’s collaborative video-performance work “Spitting” and “Hugging” is to be displayed in the second space.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a limited edition printed fanzine, a selection of images selected by the artists, with written contributions by art critic Philippa Snow, and design by Johanna Bonnavier.

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Aviya Wyse (b. 1988) Wyse’s work has been presented at the Tivon gallery, and will be included in an exhibition at the Inga Gallery, Tel Aviv, in February 2014, and Pink Cube Gallery, Oslo, in Spring 2014.

Yaeli Gabriely (b.1988) Gabriely will have an exhibition in the Ramat-Gan Museum, Israel, in September 2013, and will also present work at the Inga Gallery, Tel Aviv, in February 2014 and at Pink Cube Gallery, Olso, in Spring 2014.

Both artists are graduates of the WIZO Academy, Haifa, Israel. They are the recipients of the 2013 America Israel Foundation Scholarship Award.

More information | yeah@no-way.org.uk | neugalleries.com

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