 | |  | |  | |  | |  | |  |
Terry Atkinson was a founding and key member of Art and
Language, a group of pioneering conceptual artists founded in
the late 1960's, who investigated politics and power of language
and how that was open to negotiation and debate. For this group,
language and images were in and of themselves political
phenomena, and the same were inherent and integral to the
politics of painting and expression. The group questioned the
critical assumptions of mainstream art practice and criticism. Short-
listed for the Turner Prize in 1985, Atkinson believes that,
“through art, it is possible to further our understanding of the
complex social and political world. Today, Atkinson continues to
produce paintings that engage their audience both politically and
critically.
STUART BRISLEY
Stuart Brisley, one of the most influential artists of the 60’s – 70’s,
is widely regarded as the "founder" of performance art in this
country, perhaps most notorious for his disturbing physical
performances, examining the body politic and images of power.
Brisley’s work dealt with challenging the human body in a physical,
psychological and emotional manner, pushing the limits of what
the body could endure, as a metaphor for the individual’s [human’
s] vulnerability. Brisley’s exploration of the essential qualities of
what it means to be human by challenging the human body in
physical, psychological and emotional ways. In much of his
performance work, Brisley establishes a dialogue of action and
reaction with his audience that pushes the boundaries of
conventions of social behaviour. Archive footage of his earlier
performances will also feature.
TIM HEAD
The elusive and contrary nature of the digital medium and its
unsettled relationship with both ourselves and with the physical
world forms the basis for the recent work. Computer programs
are written to generate unique events in ‘real time’ on screens,
projections and inkjet prints that focus on the intrinsic properties
of these digital media. The programs operate at the primary
scale of the medium’s smallest visual element (the pixel or inkjet
dot) by treating each element as a separate individual entity. The
medium is no longer transparent but opaque. This is an interest
of Head’s that has persisted in various forms in his career which
culminated in his viral digital photographs that were shown in his
Whitechapel Gallery solo exhibition in 1992 and when he
represented Great Britain in the Venice Biennale in 1980.
