Catherine Biocca

Alternative futures + decentralised communities in There will be nothing left to suck at Bank Space Gallery, May 11 – May 26

10 May 2017

The There will be nothing left to suck group exhibition is on at London’s Bank Space Gallery, opening May 11 and running to May 26.

Curated by the Dow Collective, the show includes work by Catherine Biocca, Byzantia Harlow, Pil and Galia Kollectiv, Katharina Ludwig, Luke Overin and Sophie Rogers.

The exhibition uses the question “What if…?” as a starting point to imagine “alternative- unexpected- futures” and unpick the development of centralised power structures in relation to “decentralised communities.” Through video, performance, text and installation, the artists will explore concepts of the renewed and the destroyed.

See the Bank Space Gallery website for details.**

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Laugh Magazine Issue 2 launch @ LD50, Sep 29

27 September 2016

Laugh Magazine is launching its second issue at London’s LD50 on September 29.

The new edition features work by Catherine Biocca, who recently took part in a two-person exhibition at Beijing’s I: project space last April, Aurora Sander, Geo Wyeth, and Joey Holder, who was one of five artists selected for the ‘Platform 2016’ programme of the Deptford X Festival.

Liv Wynter and Emily Pope will each perform the night of the launch. The evening includes video and installations with an after party at The Victoria in Dalston, which includes music from Poppy Tibbs and PUSSY MAFIA.

See the FB event page for more details.**

LAUGH Magazine Issue 2 Launch + Show @ LD 50, Sep 29

Image courtesy of Laugh Magazine.

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Multiple Choice Double Happiness (2016) documentation

18 May 2016

Artist-run project Jenifer Nails have organised Multiple Choice, Double Happiness, a joint exhibition running April 26 through May 25 of works by Catherine Biocca and Yuki Kishino at Beijing’s I: project space. The show and the show’s text are based in the thought that some things, once exposed and experienced, stay entrenched in patterns of behaviour —in the noises of song birds, for example —until new things slowly and finally replace them.

As an exhibition, Multiple Choice, Double Happiness it is visually simple, made really of only a few components: one work consists of aluminium bars and white-laced 3D-printed corner joints with some accompanying prints on acrylic glass. These provide suggestions of configurations, and an image, perhaps life-size or a little bigger, of what looks like a cross between a cat’s indoor playground, with material pillars perfect for scratching, and a complex bird’s house with huts perfect for resting, printed on PVC and draped over an easel.

BanQiao Hutong 10甲/ I: project space, Siheyuan entry. Courtesy Jenifer Nails, Frankfurt, + I:Project Space, Beijing.
BanQiao Hutong 10甲/ I: project space, Siheyuan entry. Courtesy Jenifer Nails, Frankfurt, + I:Project Space, Beijing.

Kishino’s pieces, all referred to in the list of captions as ‘Volume 5, or ‘Volume 5,6 & 7′, for example, are “rearranged by Jenifer Nails” (also included as a part of the works’ title and caption). Because the floor in the Beijing space is tiled in groups of diamonds, small and large, it is hard to tell whether the light aluminium lattices are being photographed on different days, having been rearranged, or whether they have been photographed from different angles. This seems integral to the notion set out by the press release, that subtle change exists only in relation to the original experience or learned information from whence it transforms:

“We assume that the office which served as an educational institution for bird zero [the one who first heard the internet dial up sound, for example] has vanished, but until new noises replace its sounds in the songs of those birds, a record remains”.

Yuki Kishino, 'Volume No. 5, 6 & 7 (rearranged by Jenifer Nails)' (2016). Installation detail. Courtesy the artist, Jenifer Nails, Frankfurt, + I:Project Space, Beijing.
Yuki Kishino, ‘Volume No. 5, 6 & 7 (rearranged by Jenifer Nails)’ (2016). Installation detail. Courtesy the artist, Jenifer Nails, Frankfurt, + I:Project Space, Beijing.

The word ‘record’ appears central to the show and its aftermath. Biocca’s work ‘Saphir blau’ (2016), existent as it is as an image on PVC —as opposed to standing in the space itself —forms an echo by having the same (or familiar) cat’s playground/bird’s house printed on both sides of the draped material. There is a double emphasis, a harmony and something that tells that what we are looking at is important, or uncanny, or worth our attention, or repeatable. Again, when scrolling through some of the installation photographs that will outlive the show, things in Biocca’s piece overlap and appear like magic as though you are looking at two different versions of the work, or two different works. In one of the bird houses suddenly appears some tiny red marks. Jenifer Nails (a collaboration between Gislind Köhler and Daniel Stempfer) have uploaded an accompanying video to the online documentation of Multiple Choice, Double Happiness, which steadies itself zoomed into the PVC print and reveals what the red marks are —although not how they appear or where they come from…

This is how the show works: all that is in and part of the work is not shown all at once because it cannot be. Any change to the Lyre bird’s song happens like an echo, or a ripple and somehow with this, nothing really gets left behind. The white removable joints in Kishino’s work are bright and memorable (and strong) acting like highlights and almost guards, or guides to both the aluminium arms and legs in their hold and the delicately evolving song of the show as a whole.**

Exhibition photos top right.

Catherine Biocca + Yuki Kishino’s Multiple Choice Double Happiness is on at Beijing’s I: project space, running April 25 to May 25, 2016.

Header image: Catherine Biocca + Yuki Kishino, Multiple Choice, Double Happiness (2016). Exhibition view. Courtesy Jenifer Nails, Frankfurt, + I:Project Space, Beijing.

 

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Catherine Biocca, Cornelia Baltes &c @ Mission Gallery, Mar 19 – Apr 9

17 March 2016

Catherine Biocca, Cornelia Baltes and Rosalie Schweiker are presenting a joint exhibition at Swansea’s Mission Gallery, opening March 19 and running to April 9.

Curated by Louise Hobson as part of the Jane Phillips Award Curatorial Residency, the show features work from the three invited artists’ distinct practices as part of a process that the press release describes in a long list of verbs: “inviting, researching, funding, mentoring, collecting, questioning, doubting, choosing, emailing, chatting, travelling, visiting, explaining, persuading, budgeting, collaborating, facilitating, printing, distributing, communicating, redrafting, coordinating, responding, compromising, adapting, transporting, curating.”

The works on display includes a new installation and “deconstructed dinosaur landscape” by Biocca called Deutscher Fürst (German for ‘German Prince’) alongside some 4-handed space drawings from her INTERGALACTIC series. Baltes will present wall-paintings of subtly shifting protagonists of an abridged visual narrative and Schweiker will show the migrant worker’s fridge magnet collection along with local drinks as part of her interest in the social functions of art.

See the Mission Gallery website for details.

Rosalie Schweiker, 'allowed not allowed'. Courtesy the artist.
Rosalie Schweiker, ‘allowed not allowed’. Courtesy the artist.
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