Semi

Peter Amoore | David Blandy | Lucy Clout | Alan Currall | Josephine Flynn | Gelitin | Internet

22 September – 14 October 2012
Fri – Sun, 12—5pm or by appointment
Preview: Friday 21 September, 7-9pm

(Frankfurters will be served)

My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!
(from the sonnet Ozymandias, by Percy Bysshe Shelley)

Christopher John Murray describes the effect of the diminished scale of the human presence in the paintings of Casper David Friedrich as directing “the viewer’s gaze towards their metaphysical dimension”.

Well, in some strange way, this is exactly the function of the images on a website called nakedmunrobagging.com. The website has many images (see image above left) that are reminiscent firstly of the scale in Friedrich’s paintings, and latterly of the Untitled photographs of Gelitin, on display in Semi. But with both Gelitin and the Naked Muno Baggers (NMB – an apt acronym for such a pastime) the diminished human scale is heightened by the exposure of the subjects’ most intimate appendages. When we begin to see the repetition of this action – the desire to strip when confronted by a vast landscape – it begs the question where does that desire stem from? There’s nothing much bigger than a mountain – Scottish, Alpine or otherwise – to compare yourself against, and nothing much more bracing than the feel of a cool mountain breeze reaching that proverbial place where the ‘sun don’t shine’.

The thing that’s most compelling about pulling your trousers down on a high peak or a vast plane is the space you occupy through that action – it’s somewhere between pathos and bathos, or likely it’s both at once. We get the bathos in the fall of the sublime landscape into the ridiculous bared arse, and the pathos of the puny human, baring what little they really have, and of such impermanent substance.

Biographies

Peter Amoore (b. 1987) graduated in 2011 with a BA in Intermedia Art from Edinburgh College of Art. Recent exhibitions include Back Garden Bienniale, Edinburgh; Our Complex, Generator Projects, Dundee and Blockbuster, Central Reservation, Bristol.

David Blandy (b. 1976) is a contemporary artist based in Brighton and London who uses video, performance, digital technology, animation and comics to investigate the popular culture that surrounds us. He has exhibited widely, including shows at The Baltic, Gateshead; the Liverpool Biennial; Turner Contemporary, Margate; Spike Island, Bristol; and Platform China Project Space, Beijing. His work is distributed by LUX, and he is represented by Seventeen Gallery in London.

Lucy Clout (born 1980, Leeds, based London) gained her MA Sculpture at Royal College of Art, London (2009), and her BA Fine Art at Goldsmiths College, London (2004). Recent solo shows include Limoncello, London (2011); International Project Space, Birmingham (2010); Associates, London; ‘The Way in Which it Landed’, Tate Britain, London; and ‘Associates in New York’, Phillips de Pury & Co., New York (all 2008).

Alan Currall (b. 1964) has exhibited widely in group and solo shows at galleries including the Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, Hayward Gallery, London, Malmö Konsthall, Malmö and Stills Gallery, Edinburgh. In 2002 he exhibited at the Jerwood Gallery as part of the Artist Platform series and was nominated for the Beck’s Futures Prize in 2003.

Josephine Flynn (B. 1975, Leigh, based in Leeds) gained her MA Fine Art at Sheffield Hallam University (2006), BA Fine Art at Leeds Metropolitan University (1998). Recent solo exhibitions include The International 3, Manchester; Axel Lapp, Berlin and Associates, London.

Gelitin is comprised of four artists. They met first in 1978 when they all attended a summer camp. They have been playing and working together. In 1993 they began exhibiting internationally and have since exhibited widely with recent solo shows including Greene Naftali Gallery, New York; Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin, Paris and Kunsthalle Krems, Austria.

In the years that Internet has been active as a collective, it has written, developed and produced numerous performances and videos, working collaboratively with different people. The group is flexible, which means that not all of the members participate in the same way every time. Internet’s performances involve candid conversations that are usually scripted and often require audience members to help out, to keep the show going to the end. Members include Diego Chamy and Siân Robinson Davies.