How to work together: inaugural 2014 commissions
a shared programme of contemporary art commissioning and research
Ella Kruglyanskaya at Studio Voltaire
11 April–8 June 2014
www.studiovoltaire.org
Gerry Bibby at The Showroom
30 April–21 June 2014
www.theshowroom.org
Céline Condorelli at Chisenhale Gallery
2 May–22 June 2014
www.chisenhale.org.uk
How to work together is a shared programme of contemporary art commissioning and research organised by three leading not-for-profit London galleries: Chisenhale Gallery, The Showroom and Studio Voltaire.
Together, over three years, the organisations are producing a thematic programme comprising a series of artists’ commissions, exhibitions, events and an online Think Tank, all responding to the question of how to work together and considering ideas of collaboration, cooperation and cohabitation.
The artists commissioned in the first year are Ella Kruglyanskaya at Studio Voltaire, Gerry Bibby at The Showroom and Céline Condorelli at Chisenhale Gallery. These are the first solo exhibitions in UK public spaces for all three artists.
Ella Kruglyanskaya (lives and works in New York) is best known for her exuberant paintings of women. Her cartoon-like characters are friends and frienemies down at the beach, out-and-about, running from a menacing presence: enforced neighbours butting against each other in the tight space of the stretched canvas. These buxom women anticipate an audience, exaggerating both voyeurism and exhibitionism, confronting cultural tropes with bawdy humour. Kruglyanskaya’s paintings vigorously play with the female form, female sexuality and social interaction.
At Studio Voltaire, Kruglyanskaya has worked on a production residency in the gallery, creating an interior wall-mural and a series of large-scale oil paintings depicting women engaged in labour and work: “grooming, brooming, and bricklaying.”
Gerry Bibby (lives and works in Berlin) has taken up residence at The Showroom in the lead up to and during his exhibition. Venturing beyond the scope of a typical artist commission, he is going behind the scenes, interrogating the organisation and commission itself, by assuming a position that shifts the traditional artist/institution dynamic. From here he is exploring both the possibilities and limitations of such a dynamic and probing the idiosyncrasies of the organisation’s apparatuses—rendering them as potential creative material.
The project focuses, in particular, on The Showroom’s heating system, the ebb and flow of which provides warmth and a generative tissue throughout the building and the community within it.
Bibby will also be editing his manuscript, a major long-term publishing project, and this will continually inform the development of the show.
Céline Condorelli (lives and works in London) presents a new project that considers friendship as a condition for working together. For her exhibition at Chisenhale Gallery, she has constructed a series of furniture-like objects, which act as support structures for conversations and interactions within the gallery.
Condorelli’s work is concerned with how all human action takes place amidst countless support structures—emotional, legal or physical, for example—mostly taken for granted, and therefore often appearing invisible. Friendship, like support, is perceived by Condorelli as an essentially political relationship—one of allegiance and responsibility—offering a framework for interrogating how we live and work, and add things into the world. Condorelli’s exhibition opens with a preview on International Workers Day, 1 May.
How to work together Think tank
The Think tank is an ongoing online library of new research building over the three years of the project. Artists, researchers and thinkers in fields from business and technology to social policy and the arts have been invited to join an open exploration of how to work together: as it might relate to the work of the three organisations, the artists they collaborate with, and their local communities, as well as society, politics and economics more widely.
The first five commissions are live on the Think tank.
A new commission by Dr. Andrea Phillips exploring how art’s organisational structures shape its politics is launched online this week. It comprises a series of interviews with Polly Staple (Director, Chisenhale Gallery), Emily Pethick (Director, The Showroom) and Joe Scotland (Director, Studio Voltaire) along with an introductory essay. This project will culminate in the forthcoming months with a manifesto for small and medium scale arts organisations, written by Dr. Phillips.
Dr. Andrea Phillips is Reader in Fine Art and Director of the Doctoral Research Programmes at Goldsmiths College, University of London.
Further information
How to work together is supported by Arts Council England through the Catalyst: capacity building and match funding scheme. The 2014 commissions programme receives additional support from Bloomberg and Outset Contemporary Art Fund. The How to work together Think tank is supported by Jerwood Charitable Foundation.
To coincide with Ella Kruglyanskaya’s commission, Studio Voltaire and Koenig Books are publishing the first-ever monograph on the artist, designed by Everything Studio, New York, with contributions from Alison Gingeras and Matthew Higgs, to be released in the summer.
Gerry Bibby’s commission feeds into a major publishing project he has developed over the past year, orchestrated by Amsterdam-based performance platform If I Can’t Dance I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution. His project has also been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body.
Céline Condorelli’s commission is produced in partnership with the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, where it will be presented as part of the exhibition Positions (5 July–12 October). A publication, The Company She Keeps, a collection of conversations exploring ideas of friendship, will be published by Book Works, Chisenhale Gallery and Van Abbemuseum in June.
Contact
Elisa Kay, Project Manager: elisa [at] howtoworktogether.org
