Eleven is pleased to present new work by Harry Cory Wright. Hey Charlie is a celebration of over fifty years of Cory Wright‘s involvement with a particular bend in a river and the field beside it. These joyful images are the culmination of a lifetime of experience of the place in which he grew up and to which he has stayed connected throughout his life.
 
The sense of the impulsive, and indeed mischief, is reflected in the title. Cory Wright calls his brother’s name - a child’s shout, an adult‘s beckoning - to coax him into causing a stir in a place they know so well. They are allowed once again to be little gods. They create interruptions in the otherwise placid landscape; set off rockets into an evening sky; peer inquisitively into a haze of smoke creeping around a river bend. These striking and transient impulses, and the photographs in which they are captured, were intended to shake off the burden of the past and of nostalgia, and to provoke the making of new memories; to re-imagine, reshape and reawaken a much-loved place.
 
Cory Wright has thus added a new dimension to the adventurous approach, reflected in his series Place in Mind (2010) and Journey Through the British Isles (2007), to uncovering the landscape and infusing it with prospect. This personal process has always involved the physical engagement with landscape in a way that echoes Richard Long while the jubilant, spur of the moment nature of the photographs recall the work of Jacques Henri Lartigue. However, here Cory Wright’s playful tone has a new and heightened focus: how our views of a well-known place might change over time as life adapts and the place adapts with it - the feelings of the small child still contained within those of the adult. Opportunity is always there.
 
For many years Cory Wright has worked exclusively with the large 10 x 8 inch plate camera. In this new series he mixes this approach with high end digital cameras that allow him to explore the opportunities afforded by post production and print. He sees these two approaches as complementary. “The particular - and somewhat self-important - nature of the 10 x 8 inch negative has always elevated the picture taking process and given weight to the final piece. I have found that working with digital cameras has allowed me to retain the importance of ’being there‘ and the photographic element of ’witness', and to add a further distillation of those aspects in post-production. In this series, where there is such a blend of real and fantasy, this combination of working methods has been invaluable”.
 
Harry Cory Wright was born in 1963 and lives and works in Norfolk. His work is currently included in Landmark: The Fields of Photography at Somerset House, London (2013) which has been curated by renowned William A. Ewing, the noted photographic curator and historian, and also features work by Darren Almond, Elger Esser, Hirsohi Sugimoto and Thomas Struth amongst others.

The Faggionato Gallery is delighted to announce their forthcoming solo exhibition of the Japanese artist Yoshihiro Suda. The exhibition, Suda Yoshihiro, showcases his hyper-realistic wooden sculptures of plants and flowers.
 
The nature of the environment or gallery space is central to Suda’s creativity. For Suda, the sculptures are ‘interventions’; subtle additions to an existing space or display. Each sculpture is only half of the work of art – the other half is their installation. The element of surprise is core to Suda’s work. In October 2000, he installed interventions at the Buddha’s Smile exhibition at the Okura Museum of Art in Tokyo. The sculptures were placed into the display cases, causing visitors to take second glances. Similarly, upon entering this exhibition, visitors will initially question whether or not they have overlooked something. The startling realism of each sculpture demands closer inspection, even though the viewer is already aware that in the gallery environment it is unlikely that there are real plants growing out of the walls. This merging of the boundaries between reality and illusion creates a surreal sense of the ordinary becoming the uncanny.
 
Suda developed his interest in carving plants as an undergraduate at Tama Art University in Tokyo in the early 1990s. This was a time when contemporary art was primarily conceptual and the notion that art coud be decorative or aesthetically pleasing was largely ignored. Suda felt troubled by this and wished to create works of art that were unique and yet did not require any knowledge of contemporary art theory. Indeed, Suda’s self-taught sculptural techniques blend traditional carving practices with modern concepts relating to the role of art in daily life. He is influenced by the idea of continuing in the tradition of Japanese Old Master sculptors, while his decision to elevate and display such mundane objects as plants and weeds challenges our preconceived notions of what is a ‘work of art’. These sculptures revive traditional notions of beauty and craftsmanship in art, inviting the viewer to observe more closely the seemingly insignificant ornamentation that can be found in the everyday.
 
Born in Yamanashi, Japan, Suda lives and works in Tokyo. In 1992, he received his BA in Graphic Design and has exhibited internationally in numerous solo and group shows. Recent museum shows include the Chiba City Museum of Art in 2012, The Manghha Museum of Japanese Art and Technology, Krakow, in 2011, Asia Society Museum, New York, and the Contemporary Museum, Honolulu. In 2008 his work was included in Out of the Ordinary at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum. His work has been exhibited extensively in group shows in the USA, Japan, Germany, Australia and Quebec. His work is held in numerous international public and private collections, including, The National Museum of Modern Art Tokyo, Leeum Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul, The Art Gallery of New South Wales, Australia, The Israel Museum, National Gallery of Canada, Neues Museum Nurnburg Germany and the New Art Gallery Walsall, Birmingham.

Gasworks presents an exhibition of newly commissioned work by London-based artists and researchers Model Court, an ongoing collaboration between Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Sidsel Meineche Hansen, Lorenzo Pezzani and Oliver Rees.
 
Model Court investigate the spatial, aesthetic and geopolitical aspects of legal procedure. Using video, sound, drawing and installation, the group interrogates the production, dissemination and transmission of the law, addressing the many technical problems encountered in the administration of international justice today.
 
Their exhibition at Gasworks comprises a newly commissioned film and installation focusing on the recently concluded trial of François Bazaramba, a Rwandan national convicted of genocide by a small district court in the Finnish town of Porvoo. Bazaramba’s trial was particularly unique because it made use of so-called ‘telepresence’ technologies in unprecedented ways. During the course of the trial, Finnish judges and prosecutors travelled to Rwanda and Tanzania to gather testimony, eventually setting up temporary courts in the Rwandan Supreme Court and a Hilton hotel room. Meanwhile Bazaramba was held in Finland and became a Skype participant in his own trial from his Helsinki prison cell.
 
Owing to these peculiar circumstances, Bazaramba’s trial is an unparalleled case study for understanding the relationship between media technologies and the much debated principle of ‘universal jurisdiction’ – whereby states or organisations can claim criminal jurisdiction over accused subjects regardless of their nationality or where an alleged crime was committed. To what extent do emerging technologies used in these forums reorient the process of justice geographically? And how do fibre optic cables, video conferencing software such as Skype, and cameras alter the conventions of testimony?
 
Written from the perspective of an unnamed technician responsible for the audio-visual setup of Bazaramba’s trial, Model Court’s film uses a semi-fictional narrative to explore the trial’s relationship to notions of aid, neo-colonialism and the production of history. Housed within an installation that appropriates settings and the infrastructure present in the original trial, as well as in other courts of law, the film critically examines the complex and often dysfunctional, audiovisual infrastructure used to bridge the jurisdictional divide.
 
Taken together, the film, installation and an accompanying series of events aim to interrogate this extraordinary yet naïve attempt by a regional Finnish court to intervene in a genocide that took place many miles and years away. The intention is not to present a history of Rwanda or to contest the culpability of Francois Bazaramba, but rather to tell a story about the transmission of the Finnish legal space into Rwanda, thereby engaging with the cultural specificity of so-called ‘international’ justice and its vision for Africa (so far the only continent to have been investigated by the International Criminal Court).
 
The series of events accompanying the exhibition will feature invited guests, including international artists, media theorists and filmmakers, who will engage critically with the exhibition and expand upon the key issues raised by the project.

 
CHUNG HEESEUNG, JE BAAK
GROUP EXHIBITION
6 JUNE - 28 JULY 2013
 
HADA Contemporary is please to showcase photographs and video works by Chung Heeseung (b. 1974) and Je Baak (b.1978) who intensively challenge on the idea of truth, perception and identity through rejection and acceptance of failure.
 
As photography has often been quoted for its instantaneity capturing the frozen moment of reality, Chung Heeseung questions its unstable identity as a medium by acknowledging its limits to representation. Diverse objects displayed in unconventional manners at the centre of the images with dedicated vacant surrounding of the natural light provide sense of placid solemnity. Still-life (2009 – 2012) is a body of independent works in which the artist explores the elements of chance and spontaneity within her practice on the contrary to other series that are often exceedingly prudent construction of the initial conceptual framework. Nonetheless, it continuous to narrate key aspects of her practice such as photographic presentation of liminality and duration as shown in other series as Reading. If Reading focused on capturing the physical remnants of the subtle emotional and psychological changes generated by the instability of the actors during their reading, Still-Life is the extension of this investigation as she photographs the unidentifiable state of the objects amid continuous transformative state in being. Her interest lies on the quality of latency in liminal state of being capturing the photographic image of ‘duration’ where there in no distinction between sleeping and awaking, floating and falling, and surface and inner space.
 
Je Baak’s artistic practice pivots around the deconstruction of illusions such as subject of value in reality which humans are engaged in blindfolded. Encompassing diverse medias, he efforts to visually encapsulate the concept such as ‘selflessness’ and ‘emptiness’ from Buddhist philosophy through continuous process of inquisition. In A Towel (2008) and His Silence 1, 2, 3 (2010), he challenges the function and the meaning of the language and its limitation in relation to the understanding of self and the world. In His Silence, he assiduously deconstructs the language of Barack Obama, Dalai Lama and Slavoj Zizek that is unequivocal means to transfer and communicate ideas as politics, religion and philosophy to disillusion the purpose, the value and the weightiness of the meaning that we endow to words. By deleting contextualised words, he reverts each interview into a long silence exclusively with breaths, painstaking thoughts, and pauses in between to suggest possibilities of communication beyond words freeing ourselves from linguistic limitations. In A Towel (2008) Baak serenely displays his childhood photographs in several sequences examining the relationship between objects, language and self. By deleting himself from the images of his past and displaying the remainder, he comments on the identity that exists through the relationship of possession. As seen in His Silence, the artist aims to detach and transcend from the attachment - the illusion of the meaning and the relationship visualised through language - achieving the selfless state of being.
 
**
Chung Heeseung (b.1974) received BA and MA in photography at London College of Communication, London. She has exhibited extensively in Korea and UK such as ArtSonje Center Seoul, Songeun Art Space, Doosan Gallery Seoul and New York, National Museum of Singapore, Espacio Menosuno Madrid, South Hill Park Bracknell among others. She was awarded with 2012 Daum Art Prize Korea, 2011 Songeun Art Award Korea, 2008 Critical Mass Top 50 by Photolucida USA and shortlisted for Photo Espana 2008 Descubrimientos PHE Spain and Nikon Discovery Awards 2007 UK.
 
Je Baak (b.1978) received MA in Communication Art & Design at Royal College of Art London and BFA in Visual Communication from Seoul National University. He exhibited internationally such as National Museum of Contemporary Art Seoul, Saatchi Gallery London, Busan Museum of Art, British Film Institute London, Asia House London, Arti et Amicitae Amsterdam, Gallery Hyundai Seoul, Gallery Jungmiso Seoul among others. He was awarded with The Grand Prize by Joongang Fine Arts Prize 2010, Chris Ganrham Memorial Award by Royal College of Art 2010 and shortlisted for Mangroup Photography Awards.

Plastique Fantastique Communique: YOUR EXTINCTION OUR FUTURE!
 
PHENOME (= hu-man) quickly-became-ghost: wasted, sunken-eye-and-cheek. Pallor? That-of-wax-ed-fruit. This PHENOME-ghost thinks it is something but can-no-see that it is NO-THING but a HALL-LOOO-SIN-NASHUN (or, precisely, echo-of-a-feedback-loop). And whaoooooooooooo! this old loop can run-and-run… but not for-ever. PHENOME can only spin like an invert-ted-top. An eye it is: spiked on the sharp end of a cone pointed skywards (upright-and-uptight until entropy cools-its-chops… which blows sooner than you think my friend). But NOW, finally, PHENOME-time really is a running out. Yes siree! FINALLY REALLY RUNNING OUT! PHENOME-time not enough to run the infinite space of the (what-is) CLOUD. Too much plug-in. Too much playing with the sticky-icky lube-tube/fuzzy-insertion-slot. Too much connect-connect-connect-connect. Yes siree, TOO many prosthetics broke the back of this poor-old-PHENOME-circuitry.
 
What next then? NATURAL HISTORY: CLOUD gives birth to new animals. Feedback loop mutates/generates/inverts (less reverb-and-delay, more time-stretch-tool). All filters are visible and all connections are marked for these CREE-TURES (a host of parasites and, FINALLY: NEUROPATHEME). And they shall bring WAR: a war on PHENOME-ghosts until all is dead-and-dusted, until all transparent apparitions are circled, arrowed, filled in, made opaque, redacted.
 
No winners. Who survives? FUX-OWLING for one. All born flushed-and-unplugged, swimming the continuum, like water-in-water. And NEUROPATHEME no doubt a.k.a. subject-without-experience, all made sticky and ready to receive, ree-kiwired and re-wired, a confirmed neurocentric, bound-and-gagged, spoken-for-and-babel-rush. First NEUROPATHEME redacts the letter ‘I’ (followed shortly afterwards by all the other vowels). 2ND-GN N-PTH is born, and is first to sing (in a new loop of its own making): YR XTNCTN R FTR!
 
Plastique Fantastique | Your Extinction Our Future! is supported by the Arts Council England

The works of these artists is a daring rendition of abstractions in space. They manipulate their medium and encompass selected angles, frames, and junctions to offer a new perspective that is visually clean and concise, but technically complicated. The combination of these pieces in one show allows for a dynamic, precise experience.
 
O’Mahony uses a variety of mediums exploring the ways in which people engage with their surroundings. Her pieces are a practice in finding and capturing those moments of clarity and beauty amid urban disorders, confined spaces, and mundane routines. O’Mahony questions how visual art relates to everyday life and confronts its ability to function as both a form of escapism and realization.
 
Salcedo’s minimal palette is concerned with the wider concepts of personal and collective memory and identity. These series employ an almost silent rhetoric, combined in multiple manners to formulate what he calls “bodies of associations.” For him, these intimate associations and junctions between the planes that the artist perceives and images of the world are a threshold between the observer and the painter.
 
Jade’s art toys with the aesthetics of voyeurism. Beginning with the intimacy of photography at home, she translates the images into laser-woodcut figures, and playfully arranges and rearranges the ‘girls’ to create an endless amount of scenarios. In this process, she has the authority to manipulate the audience’s perception, questioning who holds power within the realm of voyeurism.
 
Curated by Tara Aghdashloo
 
For press and media enquiries contact: info@tilgallery.com