Nervous System

24 Apr 2009 - 03 May 2009

Private View 23 April, 6.30- 9 pm

Gallery open Mon - Sun 12 - 6 pm

Collateral event: Back and Forth. And all over again, Saturday 2nd May, 7.30 pm.
Screening programme curated by Marialaura Ghidini and Gaia Tedone.

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Private View Event: Performance by Charlotte Eatock at 8pm.

A jetty; the remainder of a site specific installation by Julia Crabtree and William Evans, will form the stage for a dance gesture exploring ideas around balance, fragility and the body.

Curated by Gaia Tedone

Nervous System is a collaborative project developed from the desire to push three practices towards new forms and manifestations. The title of the exhibition refers to the paintings of Francis Bacon and his interpretation of paint as a material affecting directly our nervous system. The exhibition wishes to explore the concept of fragility, focusing on the body as a vehicle revealing the vulnerability of human nature in response to social relations and hierarchies. By navigating within the territory of corporality and abstraction, repulsion and attraction, Nervous System wishes to set in motion instinctive reactions.

The three artists tackle a reality in which the boundaries between fantasy and threat, beauty and horror are constantly negotiated. The resistance of these boundaries is challenged by the documentary approach of Yaron Lapid and Ellen Nolan and questioned by the open nature of Aliki Krikidi's work.

Aliki Krikidi creates non-linear representations of dream-like situations, exploring both stylistically and conceptually the mutable nature of painting. Her work develops as an unfinished script, which can find its complete manifestation only outside the painting itself. For Nervous System the artist brings together existing works such as the painting Galaxy call or a local call? and an inedited project inspired by the play The Cocktail Party by T.S.Eliot.

Yaron Lapid explores his surroundings through the camera lenses, questioning the possibility of a truly direct representation of social unevenness. In his video Arcadia, downtown he documents the hopeless attempts of a man to regain control of his own body, questioning the ethical boundaries of video as a medium. With the work The New Zero, the artist reflects on the potentiality of photography to re-assemble layers of personal and collective history. The traditional parameters of storytelling are questioned and new narratives start to unfold.

Ellen Nolan reflects on the passage of time, investigating the notion of movement and stasis in relation to the human body. In between a ritual and an unconscious dream, the video Stop running depicts a female figure escaping from the wood of her own threats and fantasies. In Self portrait, two weeks later, it is the artist's body that get exposed and whose fragility is revealed. The artist will also be presenting an image from the series Previous Personality, which focuses on the alteration of physical and mental perceptions as a consequence of the ageing process and illness.

The artists here presented share a fascination towards the limits of their medium and wish to rethink them, not in terms of linear narratives, but of evolving bodies.
Central to this process is the location, the James Taylor Gallery, with its industrial features and decadent appearance. Within its walls, Nervous System wishes to trigger reflections on the ethical and aesthetical implications of these artists' raw material: life.

Collateral event: Back and Forth. And all over again, Saturday 2nd May, 7.30 pm. Screening programme curated by Marialaura Ghidini and Gaia Tedone.

Project supported by Zone D / Athens, Greece (www.zone-d.gr)
Graphic design by METHOD AND MASH.

For further information on Charlotte Eatock visit www.charlotte-eatock.com, Julia Crabtree and William Evans can be contacted at juliaandwill@gmail.com

Images from Nervous System

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