Title: No understanding between the brain and the hands
Location: Kemistry Gallery
Start Time: 18:00
Date: 2009-03-05

No understanding between the brain and the hands is a collaboration between Pocko photographers and illustrators. Inspired by Metropolis, the 1927 silent science fiction film created by the famed director Fritz Lang, four of Pocko’s photographers have collaborated with nine different designers to create interpretation of the film

From strange creatures taking over the concrete jungle to our understanding of the city as a living organism, the images created as part of No understanding between the brain and the hands reinterpret Lang’s urban distopya, creating new versions of the city as we know it today. Questionning the relationship that we share with the city, the joining of photographers with illustrators has resulted in a striking collection of images which challenge our place within today metropolis.

Accompanying the exhibition is issue one of Pocko Times, a large format collection of visual accompanying short stories from the work of the Pocko Network

Pocko was founded in 1999 in London by Nicola Schwartz, a photography graduate of the Royal College of Art. It has rapidly become an internationally known company working with contemporary artists and with forward thinking brands.

Kemistry Gallery
43 Charlotte Road, Shoreditch
London EC2A 3PD
kemistrygallery.co.uk

Title: Rodchenko and Popova: Defining Constructivism 12 February – 17 May 2009
Location: Tate Modern
Description: The Russian Revolution was accompanied by a remarkable period of artistic experiment known as Constructivism, which questioned the fundamental properties of art and asked what its place should be in a new society. The Constructivists challenged the idea of the work of art as a unique commodity, explored more collective ways of working, and looked at how they could contribute to everyday life through design, architecture, industrial production, theatre and film.

Liubov Popova (1889-1924) and Aleksandr Rodchenko (1891-1956) were pivotal figures in the debates and discussions that defined Constructivism. Rodchenko, whose wife Varvara Stepanova was a major artist in her own right, energetically embraced almost all of its manifestations, from advertising to photography and film. Popova’s achievements in painting, theatre, and graphic and textile design took place in spite of ill health and tragedy: her husband died of typhoid in 1919, and she spent a year recuperating from the illness herself. In 1924 she and her son both died of scarlet fever.

The Constructivists compared the artist to an engineer, arranging materials scientifically and objectively, and producing art works as rationally as any other manufactured object. This was, in theory, an art that transcended gender differences. The equality of the sexes was an important Communist principle, and this was one of the first periods in history when female artists were valued as highly as their male counterparts.
Date: 2009-02-15

Title: Don’t Smile Now… Save it for Later!
Location: Donlon Books - 210 Cambridge Heath Road
Description: A new publication is out now! Don’t Smile Now… Save it for Later! The project shows views from London photo booths. By using a mirror, keeping the curtain open and paying the necessary £4, the booth takes a polaroid of its own surroundings. A book launch will be held at Donlon Books (210 Cambridge Heath Road, London) on the 5th of December from 6 to 9pm. Copies will be available for £25.
Start Time: 18:00
Date: 2008-12-05
End Time: 21:00

Title: Przemek Matecki
Location: Hollybush Garden
Description: Przemek Matecki is a lover of the city – only here can he find traces of other people’s lives. He walks, looks around, rummages, finds and examines - collecting things that other people have left behind. Matecki is currently fascinated with found images and in particular two kinds of images; the iconic image of a pop star or a model, often found in magazines, and the anonymous image of an individual in a portrait or a family photograph. Most of Matecki’s paintings and collages consist of a careful balance of found image and abstract painting. Neither one leads the way, the two equally influencing each other.

Start Time: 18:30
Date: 2008-10-13

Faced with these images and photographs of known or unknown people, the viewer might start reading meaning into the painting, trying to put together a story about the faces, bodies, objects and the sometime fragments on show. When asked what it is we see in his paintings Matecki answers – “what you see is nothing” - it simply isn’t in his interest to speculate about meaning on behalf of the beholder. Leaving little clues in his paintings he seems more concerned with posing counter questions; what is an image, how is meaning produced and interpreted, to what extent can an image be disseminated objectively and what part of the understanding is subjective?

The subjects of the paintings are eclectic, with many allusions to history and tradition on the one hand and popular/street culture on the other. Hypothetically Matecki could belong to the disputed movement Neoism. It would suit his attitude - one that converges life and reality and which seeks to discredit a hierarchy of values. Punk has unquestionably influenced Matecki’s sensibility - the anarchist spontaneity, the simplicity, the casualness of his brush strokes, the love of the grotesque and the penchant for trash. By deliberately exposing the imperfect and the cumbersome Matecki wishes to retain the human and the flawed. There is definitely an element of anarchy in Matecki’s work, but countered by an air of melancholy.

Matecki can work on a single painting for months; the seeming spontaneity and emotional directness of his art is an illusion in the eye of the beholder. Not getting the ‘point’ of exhibitions, Matecki’s interest in a piece ends when he decides that it is finished. Ultimately it is painting as a process, as a medium that he is committed to.

Przemek Matecki lives and works in Warsaw. This will be his first solo show in Britain. Recent exhibitions include Past Present curated by Vincent Honoré for the Zabludowicz Collection at 176, Place to live, place to love, BWA Gallery, Wroclaw, Poland, Efekt czerwonych oczu Fotografia polska XXI wieku, Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw

Title: Jason Evans & Viktor
Location: ICA - lower gallery
Description: Photographer Jason Evans will discuss his abuse of basic analogue equipment, inviting happy accident and chance into his practice.
Start Time: 07:00
Date: 2008-08-28