A group show in January with London Group members and friends including the Computer Arts Society and Lumen Prize.
A three day experimental show in a blacked out Cello Factory with talks, workshops and performance. You can see many images of the show on The London Group’s Flickr page here.
In the Dark
The Cello Factory, 33-34 Cornwall Rd, Lambeth, London SE1 8TJ
January 17th, 18th, 19th 2-6pm
PV Thursday 17th 6-8pm with three performance artists.
Curated by Genetic Moo, this show combines the members’ work with friends from the Computer Arts Society and Lumen Prize. The one stipulation for the artworks in the show is that they generate their own light (for example using projection) or can be illuminated by other works (ie projected onto). This simple rule alone has meant the works are interlinked in ways not seen before turning the whole group exhibition into an installation of sorts, filling all surfaces of the unique space including the ceiling. Works spilled over onto other works and there were several collaborations between artists.
The show received about 600 visitors + the PV night so we’d estimate about 900. The first night’s opening event was packed with three diverse light based performances adding energy and excitement. The second day saw 20 people learn some creative coding working on a collaborative animation. Followed by talks by several digital artists and then finished off with a riveting musical performance by Stephen Carley. The last day was open to the public and 88 people came through the door of all ages. The artists present had several interesting conversations and lots of new ideas for future collaborations. The show was a great success and we are thinking about how to take that success forward.
Here is a list of the artists involved split into groups.
The London Group
Susan Haire
Looking beneath the surface (adhesive mirror on card)
Enfolded light (smashed DVDs)
Two works from a solo show in Peterborough Cathedral 2012 using a many-faceted response to reflection with mirrors, reflective surfaces, light and distortion. Visitors were invited on a journey of self-reflection which included the idea that everything reflects everything else.
Music by Stephen Dydo.
www.susanhaire.com
Suzan Swale
Tell me no more lies
Being sane in insane places
You were never really here
Red, blue and white Neons.
Tommy Seaward
POWER / POWERLESS
Mixed Media
Tri-partite, wall mounted sculpture.
@tommyseaward
Cadi Froehlich
Self-portrait with phone
Salvaged copper of approx weight contained within each.
Interception (suspended)
A human scale spiral of salvaged copper temporarily freed from salvage yard.
The metal is the width of a standard postcard, and when suspended the weight of the material allows it movement.
Jockel Liess
Fluid variations
This work is a non-durational live generative audiovisual environment. It has no beginning, end, or in the traditional sense progression, but rather exists as a stream of transient moments in time.
Paul Tecklenberg
Spin Cycle
Get ‘mesmerised’ as the painting by Paul Delaroche ‘The Execution of Lady Jane Grey’ spins around the room.
www.thelondongroup.com/paul-tecklenberg/
Clive Burton
Shroud
A conceptual instalation work conceived, constructed and installed as a direct response to the exhibitions title and concept of ‘In the Dark’.Under the Shroud of a blackout cloth total darkness and a meditative state can be simulated.
www.thelondongroup.com/clive-burton
Angela Eames
CONSEQUENCE (20 mins video).
Cracks in the fabric of matter as projected time-based work.
CONTINUUM (12 mins video).
Interrupted skyscape transforming from day into night (and back again).
Almuth Tebbenhoff
‘A recent exhibition specified pieces the size of a matchbox. So I scaled down my Indensity cubes and then got obsessed with the delicate quality and fineness of the little cubes. I’m now making little townships, cities, villages and they have come to life.’
Exquisite Corpse
This was a collaboration between 5 London Group members after a suggestion by Bryan Benge. Each artist added approximately 30 seconds of their own video onto the previous additions building a video mashup. Stephen Carley, Sandra Crisp & Genetic Moo took part. The result was edited algorithmically to bring the footage together.
Stephen Carley
The work I have made for IN THE DARK is a combination of re-mixed older pieces, current work in progress and the result of a major spring clean in the studio.
LIGHTBULB MOMENT.
12 X 35mm SLIDES, SLIDE PROJECTOR.
Slogans. Signifiers. Flags. House Bricks. Paper Boats. Profanities…
POORLY CHOREOGRAPHED VIDEO LOOPS, MOBILE PHONE.
Stamping. Hopping. Walking backwards. Ad infinitum. Look at me, look at me…
9 X COBWEB AND DUST GLASS SLIDES, LIGHTBOX.
The structure is broken, discarded, useless…
A PHOTOGRAM OF A LIGHTBULB, A CANDLE.
Shedding some light…
BROKEN LOOPS
Audio Performance on Friday night
A live piece of around 13 minutes duration.
Under the name AUDIOMAPS I’ve sampled and looped a range of source material from broken xylophones though to argumentative radio phone ins, overlaid by spoken word.
Sandra Crisp
RANDOM_STRING_4
Code-driven moving image work made with Processing that uses online visual and text debris.
TWITTERSTORM
Scrolling banner – continually updating live-feed of Tweets.
Visitors are invited to interact with the work via Twitter using the following hashtag #cellonews
Erika Winstone
Where are we now?
Installation, HD video loop projected, perspex, small drawn coloured glass, metal point, paint and canvas. This installation combines a series of journeys taken by the artist’s daughter (and friends) between; 2007 and 2019 in London and Europe. The artist’s use of contrasting sound, light, reflection and shadow foreground values of fluidity, connection and ease of movement, reflected at this point of imminent dramatic change.
Ian Parker
Re film film
Film something mundane, forwards and backwards, project it, re film it, repeat, repeat.
Amanda Loomes
Memento Mori for a Television
A fly tipped television creates space to reflect on transience before finally leaving us in the dark.
Eric Fong
CS-4322
A photo taken at the Crime Scene House, Forensic Science department, Teesside University
David Theobald
Internet of Things (IoT)
Animation of text extracts taken from the promotional material for various internet connected household items currently available for purchase online.
X-Ray Aesthetics
A collaborative work with x-ray photographer Nick Veasey.
Tisna Westerhof
Point of View(diptych)
vintage lace curtains, wadding embroidery thread, window frames
The diptych occupies the space between inside and outside; comfortable domesticity and the chaos and violence of the world.
Genetic Moo
Medusa
Portrait of a Jellyfish in light.
Friends of London Group :
Christina Augustesen
Rita Parniczky
X-Ray Series
I explore structure by revealing and manipulating the entire vertical warp, which I see as the skeleton of the woven body. The use of nylon monofilament distinguishes my sculptures from traditional textiles while installation with light enhances the translucent structure.
Alexander Hinks and Oli Lane
Drawn to Another World
Video loop
In this video Oli uses digital collages of Alex’s paintings to create the experience of actually being inside a painting, as if peering into another world, evoking the feeling of being immersed in fluid colour and deep swirling space.
Computer Arts Society
The Computer Arts Society are celebrating their 50th anniversary this year.
Collection
The Computer Arts Society is building a collection of digital artworks by people associated with the society over the years.
Works by Ernest Edmonds, Andy Lomas and Paul Brown are being shown in rotation in this presentation.
The Computer Arts Society include digital art experts whose pixels and data naturally lend themselves to projection and collaboration. Some works have been specifically designed as collaborative. Light boxes by Sean Clark consists of Raspberry Pi’s and flat screen monitors embedded in a light box. Each of the three boxes by Clark, Ernest Edmonds and Genetic Moo periodically send and receive signals to each other through local wifi, using the incoming data to adapt their own visual configurations. The system is designed to be expandable with three more artists due to join the network in future shows. This piece and others by Clark and Edmonds expand upon their conversations going back decades about simple connected art, where the artwork emerges from a system rather than directly from the artist.
Nick Lambert
Geodesic Timelapse (2018)
Timelapse images of the clouds reveal something both of structures and colours in the sky that can only be perceived with long recorded sequences. As it unfolds it can be a meditation on metamorphosis or mortality.
Nick Lambert is the hea of the Computer Arts Society and also teaches at Ravensbourne.
Sean Clark
artThings
An infrastructure for connected digital artworks. It uses Internet of Things technology to connect artworks running on computers, web browsers or micro controllers to each other and to sensors and actuators. Connected artworks can be located in the same place or in different parts of the world. artThings makes use of mobile and WiFi networks for communication.
Haze (Screen-based circles) and Colloquy
(Three communicating lights). Sean Clark is working to establish artThings as an open standard available for all artists to use for free.
Andy Lomas
Plantlike Forms
High definition video, Raspberry Pi, LCD display.
An exploration of complex forms that emerge from morphogenesis. Taking inspiration from the work of Alan Turing, D’Arcy Thompson and Ernst Haeckel, digital simulation techniques are used to generate structures from rules of growth at the level of individual cells. Parameters control how parent and daughter cells interact with their immediate neighbours.
Paul Brown
Builder/Eater
Dragon
Four Dragons
4^16
4^15
Kinetic Paintings – studies in perception. Reprogrammed in the Processing language. 2016-2018.
Original versions were in other languages including one from 1977 programmed on a Nova minicomputer. They were designed for specific architectural installations and exhibitions around the world.
Ernest Edmonds
Energy Ruskin
Film of generative program. (Monitor / Projection)
Esther Rolinson
‘Untitled’ – Section of prototype light installation.
This is a WIP installation structure based on a series of drawings for a large scale public art work. Materials: hand worked aluminium tube, coated steel wire and programmed LED’s.
The programming has been developed with Sean Clark.
The Lumen Prize
Lumen Prize will be showcasing films on the theme of Worlds We Make by a selection of their artists and have commissioned their 2018 winning student artist Ziwei Wu to make a new furry installation in the upstairs room. This should be a fluffy antidote to the darkness below.
Ziwei Wu
Mimicry
Animals use mimicry to imitate their environment and change themselves. This work is trying to build a protected, warm, fantasy pseudo-environment in my mind – through a partial reorganization of the real environment.
Lumen Prize Shortlisted digital films
Matteo Zamagni
Grayson Cooke
Boredom Research
Mike Pelletier
Francois-Xavier de Costerd Universal Everything
From manipulating landscapes for industry, to changing the nature of the food we eat, Lumen Projects presents a curated selection of short films that ask you to re-evaluate our environment and its future.
Performers
There were three performers on the opening night event.
Birgitta Hosea
dotdot dash
A participatory live animation made by the audience through communal light drawing and improvised sound, conducted by Birgitta Hosea.
Fay Burnett
Lime Light (Adjusting Feng Shui)
An experimental performance interacting with, and reconfiguring, the space using projected light and mirrors.
burnettfay.wixsite.com/artwork
Fanny Cox
Music, video and dance performance by Peckham based artist.
Workshops
On Friday 18th from 2-4pm there were creative coding workshops delivered by Nicola and Tim from Genetic Moo. These are free to attend and we can take up to about 20 people, all equipment provided or bring your own laptops. Together we will learn how to program dynamic animations in the Processing language. These will be combined into a large scale generative animation which will be projected into the Cello Factory after the workshops. This is a great opportunity for complete beginners to learn how to make art using computers.
Talks
Also on Friday the 18th from 4-6pm there will be short talks by Nick Lambert and Sean Clark from the Computer Arts Society, and Jack Addis from the Lumen Prize. Andy Lomas and Esther Rolinson will discuss their practices. London Group members Tim Pickup and Nicola Schauerman from Genetic Moo will also talk about the challenges of working in the dark and with other people.
Music
After the talks there will be light refreshments and there will be live music by audiomaps and you can hear their audio here.
Full list of artists involved :
The London Group : Genetic Moo, Susan Haire, Suzan Swale, Tommy Seaward, Cadi Froehlich, Jockel Liess, Paul Tecklenberg, Clive Burton, Angela Eames, Almuth Tebbenhof, Bryan Benge, Stephen Carley, Sandra Crisp, Erika Winstone, Ian Parker, Amanda Loomes, Eric Fong, David Theobald, Tisna Westerhof
Computer Arts Society : Nick Lambert, Paul Brown, Sean Clark, Ernest Edmonds, boredomresearch, Andy Lomas, Esther Rollinson.
Lumen Prize : Ziwei Wu + Matteo Zamagni, Grayson Cooke, boredomresearch, Mike Pelletier, Francois-Xavier de Costerd, Universal Everything.
Performers : Fay Burnett, Birgitta Hosea & Fanny Cox