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5/18/2017 2 Comments

EXHIBITION: The Artists Donating 'One Piece' for Peace in Chechnya

Group show One Piece, opening Tuesday 23rd May at NSH Arts in Mile End, will raise funds for the Russian LGBT Network's efforts to protect and evacuate gay people who are facing persecution in Chechnya.
CKM speaks to exhibition organisers, artists Jonathan Dean and Ed Firth, and takes a look at some of the artists exhibiting.

A diverse community of artists responded to an urgent call to donate work for an exhibition then being planned in real time, now set to open on the 23rd of May. A second wave of auctions will follow; artists can sell work using the hashtag #OnePieceforChechnya and donate proceeds directly. Exhibition organisers Jonathan Dean and Ed Firth explain; 'we wanted to open this show before May 26th, the deadline set by the Chechen president to eradicate all gay people from the republic'.

East London-based artists and animators Dean and Firth are bringing together over 40 artists to auction paintings, prints, collage, ceramics, sculpture and zines. On their decision to hold the fundraising exhibition, Dean and Firth reflect that as queer people themselves, 'this is an issue close to our hearts and we're acutely aware that it could very well be ourselves being thrown to our deaths by a family member, or rounded up and tortured in a secret prison, by a government who insist publicly that we don't even exist.'

Dean and Firth's response to the crisis came from the realisation that although they cannot hold the perpetrators to account, they can contribute towards keeping queer people in Chechnya safe by raising funds directly for Russian LGBT organisations who are working hard on doing just that. To this end, they put feelers out to artists to donate one piece for peace, gathering a 'range of professional artists all responding to this emergency with compassion and creativity'.

William Martin, a queer ceramicist taking part in the exhibition, says, 'coming from Cape Town, I've seen structural violence first hand. I came of age after Apartheid, so my sexuality was never illegal. That wasn't the case for my older friends. I saw how the damage of that experience stayed with them into later life'. On his decision to donate work to the exhibition, Martin relates that 'LGBTQ+ rights can never be taken for granted. I'm donating to One Piece for Chechnya to fight back against the lethal use of our community as a nationalist scapegoat'.

Here, we look at just a few of the artists donating work, and their pieces:

FREDERIK ANDERSSON

'If you ask my friends about me they will surely tell you about my obsession for drawing naked people, especially hairy men. This is all true, I have a big interest in subjects such as Sex and intimacy. You can see this red string running through all of my work going through my writing, Illustration & my ceramics.'

WILLIAM MARTIN

'William Martin uses ceramic as a medium for both its material, and socio-economic history. He does this to contextualise his own position, addressing the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution and Colonialism. He uses his biography as the field of study, providing examples that highlight the complex and conflicted nature of meaning.'

REBECCA CHITTICKS

'I find my work to be informed by the creeping influence of the digital realm. Whilst browsing through feeds and skimming streams of data I am constantly soaking up ideas and finding relationships, imagined narratives between disparate threads of information, fragments of pictures, colours and these are used as my references.'

NOAH DENT

Noah Dent designs and animates imagery at Google UK. He organised One Piece with Ed Firth: 'this is an issue close to our hearts and we're acutely aware that it could very well be ourselves being thrown to our deaths by a family member, or rounded up and tortured in a secret prison, by a government who insist publicly that we don't even exist'.

MARTIN PERRY

'After years of art direction Martin is now seriously pursuing his own photography with an emphasis on travel, portrait and menswear editorials. He is directing his first short film and spends as much time as possible mentoring young and upcoming creatives.'

Other artists showing work include Phoebe Boswell, Xavier Boldtron Cardona, Chris Duncan, Ego Rodriguez, Gregory Tingay, Hormazd Geve Narielwalla, James Davison, John Walter, Paul Bommer, Peter Jones, Richard Kilroy, Santiago Alcón, Sina Sparrow, William Martin, Bjørn-Erik Aschim, Daniela Attard, David Wilson, Fredrik Sven Knut Anderssonn, Isago Fukuda, John Booth, Kirsty Harris, Manel Ortega, Martin Perry, Nick Taylor, Phoebe Boswell, Ricardo Bessa, Guy Burch and Keith Tenor.

'One Piece' opens at 7pm on Tuesday 23rd May at NSH Arts in Mile End, East London. The exhibition will run until Tuesday 30th May.

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5/15/2017 1 Comment

ART: Dolph van Eden, Untitled Abstracts

'Exploring the veracity of a portrait or a story raises issues that I present as images that pull an oscillating focus on both artist and viewer'

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Dolph van Eden graduated from UAL in 2014. His areas of interest are Visual Anthropology and the history of Central Asia. Via studies in anthropology and fine art, Dolph van Eden approaches both disciplines by employing drawing as a primary method of investigation in his practice.
See more of van Eden's work on his website.

DOLPH VAN EDEN SAYS

'Questions regarding the reliability of memory, recall, perception and interpretation form the foundation of my practice. Exploring the veracity of a portrait or a story raises issues that I present as images that pull an oscillating focus on both artist and viewer. A current series of abstract drawings map psychological responses to memory and gestures of mark making record topographical outcomes.'

CKM SAYS

The line work of van Eden's abstract drawings form confident descriptions of an unknown subject, repeated shapes create coded maps which feel both novel and familiar. Van Eden's drawings are an intriguing experiment in the physical reification of psychological interactions between artist and subject.

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5/6/2017 0 Comments

ART: Valerie Savchits

'I have chosen in my recent work to explore and reveal how aesthetics can be made to move in the opposite direction from the norms and eventually become a ‘reversed aesthetics’ or, in other words, how to unsee that fake beauty'

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Valerie Savchits was born to a Russian-speaking family near the Baltic Sea in Latvia in 1993. She graduated from the University of Salford in 2016 with a degree in Visual Arts.

Valerie uses a wide array of materials and techniques in her artwork including oil paint, spray paint and neon installations. Savchits exhibits nationally and internationally working from her studio in Hotel Elephant Studios & Gallery in Southwark, London. Her work has appeared in Tate Modern, Saatchi Gallery, Affordable Art Fair UK, The Guardian, BBC Live and Uniqlo on Oxford St.

In March 2017 Valerie teamed up with a premium British accessories brand Paul's Boutique to work on a bag design for PB's spring marketing campaign. She is also one of the winners of Hotel Elephant & Southwark Council's Art & Culture Grant Scheme.

VALERIE SAVCHITS SAYS

'My concern is that turning away from established norms should not be ignored anymore as the whole process reflects the truth of a large portion of the population and gives a chance to leave prejudices of the past behind us.'

CKM SAYS

CKM loves the way in which Savchits' work subverts familiar artistic and cultural symbols (addressing race politics in Manet's Olympia, and ethnic stereotypes by using Russian dolls), as well as gendered colour palettes (by uglying the colour pink) to create art which challenges received notions of aesthetics, raising questions of identity in post-soviet societies, the art world and elsewhere.

Find out more about Valerie Savchits and enter a competition to win a portrait on her website.

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5/6/2017 1 Comment

Poetry: Glasgow (Revisited) by Steven Mayoff

Glasgow autumn was. Always.

…

My uncle’s wood bare floors and pale
vases green. A child’s upright
piano bust, his mother done by.

Another clay beside figure
it (androgynous. Perhaps
unfinished. Perhaps)

My uncle’s own and bedroom aunt
and my guest mother a room.
The crib child’s room
shared and I.

Long uncle-legged, a teacher
lean artist. Dull breaking
plaster wall-space (grey between
hung painting one his.

A man) chair sitting
blue, head propped hand.

Waiting his.

…

Glasgow flew to we,
my I mother. Clouds close
hovered, tails by wisping
patch spectral. My stuck suction

face a cup to small glass
window fish bowl. Ocean I
below could. Vast.
And distant. Unreal and.

…

Apple child-cheeked (and ringlet
mopped inky. He) naked
cold flat white. Pitched yowl
high the corner every piercing.
Dance ritual or an absurd.

Music machine strained cheap, dappled he
and scratchy, in one round
place turning. (And round.
Expressionless. A between)
cross music. Holy box shaman and.

Mother my child aunt, great
sweaters inhabited.
Usually hair brown covered
straight. A kerchief by and. Stray
or two the strand
always like.

Threads: escaping light.

…

Father off airport saw us.
A lounge was chair arms
and couches with. And sand
standing ashtrays filled
with. Crushed sprouting
cacti butts in well
desert-spaced. Huge were runway
seen windows through (which.
My I mother) as walked
tarmac passengers
with across. People glass
airplanes behind the watching.
The land and the take
off. One father of my.
Waving. His.

…

Early uncle’s flat I would room
mornings creep mother’s in
my. Half floor darkness sighed
boards heavy weight under my.
Snickering door her: opening
hinges of. Rolling bed’s
bundled body the topography
my I mother’s outline against
curled the cold. Whispering

slipped not to wake
so as covers her under.
Formed air lips like words
frost a winter in.

Waited. And. Movement for a.
Murmur, half her
eyes opening dark.
And distant. Unreal shuddered
body her tighter
and hugged herself she.

Stuttering throat her
rattled like. Engine.
Broke jagged.
Coughing raw (fits
into of. Growing.

Worse.)

…

Museum a Glasgow in. There was.

There a boy my was friend.
Two older years was
than he I. High we hollow
through walked
and corridors. The whale
of inside a. Tools
of (and exhibit weapons
swallowed. History). Whole.

And room then
there the. Was. Dinosaurs.
Repetition skeletons; a bone
reconstructed of. Room the pointing.

Blanks. The fill in.

Curve to run each hand my along
bump, each… still to search sleeping out
the marrow, unearthed even
after have the bones been.

…

White I night that as
bone lay my bed in.
Dreamed and.

A moon under.

…

Past the morning and in crept
the I breathing
child’s crib. Books piano
past and, the parroting. Blue silence

(phonograph. My room’s
mother) crept toward.

Open finding. Door,
the and flat bed smooth.

Uncle my beside was
me standing his. Red. Eyes drawn
face his. Hair. My long
touched fingers (gentle.
Telepathy) some if
impart could they, by.

What me. To tell. He had.

ABOUT THE POET

Steven Mayoff was born and raised in Montreal, later on lived in Toronto and moved to the bucolic splendor of Prince Edward Island, Canada in 2001. His fiction and poetry have appeared in literary journals across Canada and the U.S. as well as in Ireland, Algeria, France, Wales and Croatia. He published two books of fiction: the story collection Fatted Calf Blues (Turnstone Press, 2009), which won a PEI Book Award, and the novel Our Lady Of Steerage (Bunim & Bannigan, 2015). Upcoming is a poetry collection Swinging Between Water And Stone to be published by Guernica Editions in 2019.
Find out more about Steven Mayoff on his website.