Including contributions by Oliver Abraham | Jamiu Agboke | Kirsty Allison | Maria Arceo | Karen Ay | Joe Broughton | Cedric Christie | Deborah Curtis | Adam Dix | Dr Eliot Albers | Alice Herrick | Richard Holley | Charlotte Hopkins Hall | Tom Hunter | Maria Graff | Thomas Langley |Claire Lawrie | Lee Maelzer | Lance Martins | Sophie Parkin | Martha Parsey | Benedict Philpott | Paul Renner & Paul Sakoilsky | Pascal Rousson |Joseph Sakoilsky | Amy Stevens | Geraldine Swayne | Finn Thompson | Gavin Turk
In the London art scene, of real artists, who question the place of the gallery, and their place in the city, there is a consistent. His name is Paul Sakoilsky, and over the summer, he’s been inviting audiences at festivals from Curious Arts to Byline to throw shaving foam at him, in a rendition of Holi gone Kunst. It’s an act he’s been documenting for much of the teens of this century. Making himself the clown in the struggle to find studio space in an increasingly difficult city to survive as an artist. Since 2007, Sakoilsky’s ever revolving Ballardian nightmare of compulsion, THE DARK TIMES, is a series of occasional graffiti, and paintings, presented as a tabloid newspaper. It documents his action of surviving the horrors of greed and excess by the rulers of London. Among international exhibitions, and several other key projects, he’s been working on a series of tower-block views of the east end, where Gramsci’s hegemony is demonstrated in full effect. Tonight, and until October 28th, THE DARK TIMES office will be located in the upstairs gallery of Angus-Hughes in Clapton, where Cedric Christie (repped by Flowers Gallery, recent work: A Reconfiguration of the Letter C, reusing the original letter C from the top of the iconic Centrepoint building in central London) is installing a Grid Impact Drawing, onto which other works will be hung from a select crowd of some of the less product-based London artists working under the shadow of Brexit. The title of the show comes from a conversation Paul had at a feast in Sorento recently, where a guest turned to his daughter at the table and claimed Paul ‘was pure’. Some eyebrows were raised; at which point she continued, ‘I tell you, pure has nothing to do with clean.’
Born in 1964, Sakoilsky was brought up in the Far East and East Anglia. Mentored by the poet George Barker when he first came to London in the early 80s, he worked across mediums. Working out of the Underwood Gallery in the BritArt days of Shoreditch, a key moment was studying radical philosophy, and travelling to Austria to meet Hermann Nitsch, the Austrian ‘actionist’. Curating work by him, and holding onto the artist’s use of violent, Situationist destruction, there’s a wonderful passing permanence to Sakoilsky’s work, like the layers of poets who walk Soho.
For the exhibition Cedric and Paul are disagreeing about the temperament of artists in this present time. What does it mean to be permanent and what it means to be in flux. The pros and cons of these positions. Cedric says ‘You’re permanent when you’re dead, you don’t move a lot.’ And Paul would like to know where he is going to be tomorrow. Both of these positions hold a particular energy in which work is made – an inquiring as to whether one is at the end or the beginning.
The show will be constantly evolving with works added during the period of the exhibition. The gallery/studio becomes a space of dialogue in the tradition between artists and works, following the recent This is the Gate of Heaven : Paul Renner & Paul Sakoilsky at Gallery46, London.
The Cellar Gallery contains 9 Conjugations of Purity an exhibition by guest curator Maria Rossetti, an Independent curator and art historian from Milan, who has collaborated with various commercial galleries, curators and art companies in Spain, Italy and the UK, as well as working on her own art projects, including performance art. She presents artists: Gordon Eliis-Brown | Michael Lowers | Inoela Cumpanasu | Per Ervik | Yulia Lisle | Neil and Cazy Art | Natalia Riabova | Tabitha Ellis | Karin Schösser.
There will also be a room created by the artist/musician Joseph Sakoilsky.
Private View Fri 12 Oct 6-9pm
Exhibition Runs 13-28 Oct 2018
Kunst Clown Performance Fri 19th October 6-8 pm
Artist Talk 4pm and Finissage 5-7pm Sunday 28th Oct
Gallery Opening Times Thurs-Sun 12-6pm •
Evenings & other viewings by Appointment
mail@angus-hughes.com or T: +44 (0)208 985 0450
paul@paulsakoilsky.com
ANGUS-HUGHES Gallery
26 Lower Clapton Rd
(at the junction of Urswick Rd)
London E5 0PD
UNITED KINGDOM
+44 208 9850450
