EOA. Projects

Events + exhibitions, Jan 19 – 25

21 January 2015

Following a big first wave of events and exhibitions last week, there are still more to come, alongside London Art Fair this week. Those include Amitai Romm at V4ULT in Berlin, as well as a music event, hosted by producer Jacques Gaspard Biberkopf and featuring live and streamed DJ sets at Panke.

Exhibitions opening in the German city include one by Jaakko Pallasvuo at Future Gallery and Nicolas Ceccaldi at Mathew Gallery, while in London Monira Al Qadiri curates Jaykar: The Cheeky Video Scene of the Gulf to close the Never Never Land exhibition at EOA.Projects. Kim Asendorf and Ole Fach are showing at Carroll/Fletcher, with an opening performance by Helen Benigson, and Phoebe Collings-James has a solo exhibition at Italian Institute of Culture.

Elsewhere, Harm van den Dorpel, Keith J. Varadi and Cally Spooner have exhibitions across LA, New York and Milan, respectively, and Queer Thoughts has organised a group exhibition across three different locations in Nicaragua.

There’s more so see below:

EVENTS

London Art Fair, Jan 21 – 25

Rotherhithe Free Shop, Jan 21

Rainbow by Queer Thoughts, Jan 22

Amitai Romm @ V4ULT, Jan 22

Dance Café January Sail, Jan 23

Till the Stars Turn Cold @ GSS Glasgow, Jan 23

Unthinkable @ Panke Berlin, Jan 23

Jaykar: The Cheeky Video Scene of the Gulf @ EOA.Projects, Jan 23

BIRTHDA5E @ China Chalet, Jan 24

Running up that Building and Diving into the Pool @ Scena Productions, Jan 24

OPENINGS

Phoebe Collings-James @ Italian Cultural Institute, Jan 19 – Feb 1

Cally Spooner @ ZERO, Jan 20 – Feb 31

Kim Asendorf + Ole Fach @ Carroll/Fletcher, Jan 22- Feb 21

M/Other Tongue @ Tenderpixel, Jan 22 – Feb 28

New Drawings @ Lely Delval, Jan 22 – Mar 7

Nicolas Ceccaldi @ Mathew Gallery, Jan 22 – Feb 28

Caroline Mesquita @ Union Pacific, Jan 22 – Feb 20

Harm van den Dorpel @ Young Projects, Jan 23 – TBA

Hybrid Poplar Trees @ Fat Relic, Jan 23 – Feb 1

I Am What You Call The Perfect Couple @ Belle Air, Jan 24 – Feb 11

MY INTERNET WAS DOWN FOR 5 MINUTES… @ Galerie Jean Rochdard, Jan 24 – Feb 21

Jaakko Pallasvuo @ Future Gallery, Jan 24 – Feb 21

Jamie Zigelbaum @ Transfer Gallery, Jan 24

Keith J. Varadi @ Retrospective, Jan 24 – Mar 1

 **

See here  for exhibitions opening last week.

Header image: Jaykar: The Cheeky Video Scene of the Gulf @ EOA.Projects.

  share news item

Never Never Land @ EOA.Projects reviewed

13 January 2015

“It’s not as naïve as it looks, you know”. That’s how artist Monira Al Qadiri once described to me the public art covering the Kuwaiti electricity generators that inspired her ‘“Muhawwil” (Transformer)’ (2014) 4-channel video installation. Currently on show at the Never Never Land group exhibition at London’s EOA.Projects, running November 28 to January 31, it’s a 350 x 350 x 260 cm lightbox featuring exact reproductions of these government sanctioned depictions of crudely-drawn figures performing tasks in lurid colour, with the added element of being animated. On a pedestal nearby, there’s a book with English translations of the Arabic bubble text that appears with these images reciting their rather unsettling religious aphorisms, moral advice warning “God is great” and “collect what you want, you will leave as you came”.

It’s appropriate that most of the work in Never Never Land, curated by Amal Khalaf and Edge of Arabia co-founder Stephen Stapleton, would feature a language largely alien to an English-speaking audience. There’s Abdullah Al Mutairi‘s ربحت معانا!!! series, with what the exhibition catalogue describes as “post-millennium Gulf gameshow” videos screening hyperreal CGI stock footage of city scapes engulfing their grinning contestants. “It’s true, the best things in life ARE free! Call in now, you’re already a winner!!!!!” they say, deadpanning the bizarre combination of ancient tradition and modern (see: ‘Western’) materialism that permeates much of a post-oil boom Arab region. Much like Al Qadiri’s ‘Muhawwil’, which she calls “advertisements of moral conduct”, all of Never Never Land‘s artworks are teeming with codes and signifiers that reveal a political undercurrent in opposition to the one being mediated in the Middle Eastern mainstream.

Hence, the horror of youth recruitment in Cairo and Amsterdam-based design duo Foundland‘s ‘Destination Paradise’ (2014) keffiyeh scarf. It’s a pretty Snakes-and-Ladders-themed pattern displaying a faceless Mickey Mouse head with a target on its brow and the promise of “angels with words of peace” under machine gun emblems, if you play the game right. This is very much a game of hide-and-seek –echoing Metahaven’s  “transparent camouflage” in their 2010 Wikileaks scarf merchandise –where the same tool of surveillance is used as one of insurgence. That’s whether it’s the “networked swarm of resistance activists” appearing as cartoon character aliases on social media in Foundland’s ‘Leaderless Revolt’ (2014), or Ahmed Mater’s sacrificial Yellow Cow intervention series, presented in a grid of photos from a 2007 performance where he dyed a cow yellow and set it free in a village. Inspired by the symbol of idolatry also known to Jews and Christians as the ‘Golden Calf’, its image reappears as an “ideologically free” consumer product in ‘Yellow Cow Cheese (Red)’ (2010) silk-screen print beside it –a thing to bind us together.

“It is very easy to draw an Arabian horse using a pencil and some colours… you too will be among the elite artists of the world”, writes Hasan Hujairi‘s  artist statement for ‘10,000 Simple Steps to Perfectly Draw an Arabian Horse’ (2014). It accompanies the sound artist’s audio-instructions on illustration, delivered by a young boy through headphones on a school desk facing the wall of screenshots of Mater’s unifying ‘Yellow Cow’.

As an exhibition that aims to reveal “the rebellion inherent in humour” –as announced in a panel on entry into the darkened EOA.Projects space –its appropriate that it should take its title from Arwa Al Neami‘s drolly understated Never Never Land series. Presented in two ceiling hung screens, they feature a single shot video of women at the Mahrajan Abha theme park in Saudi Arabia that “forbids screaming and shouting on rides and ‘careless’ lifting of abayas.”. The moving image of bumper cars is eerily silent, as is the repetitive 2:41 minute video of a Drop Tower, as one woman mechanically readjusts her abaya in time with each fall.

Can Jokes Bring Down Governments? ask Metahaven in the title of their 2013 e-book. The answer to that remains to be seen but in the meantime exhibitions like Never Never Land are doing their part to find out when they “criticise the old world in content and advocate a new one in form”. **

Exhibition photos, top right.

Never Never Land group exhibition is on at London’s EOA.Projects, running November 28 to January 31, 2015.

Header image: Abdullah Al Mutairi, ربحت معانا!!! @ Never Never Land. Install view. Courtesy EOA.Projects and the artist.

  share news item

End of Year events + exhibition openings (November)

27 November 2014

With the end of year wind-up comes the last surge of final shows to finish off November and December, so in an effort to give space to upcoming events that spill out of the schedule, we’ve rounded up show openings and events in the week ending November and leading to the New Year.

Beginning November 23 is Aimee Heinemann‘s second residential exhibition, Instableat Grove House, as well as the Holly Childs-curated Quake II two-person show at Arcadia Missa, as well as Arca + Jesse Kanda performing an audiovisual collaboration at the ICA, as well as a group exhibition at EOA. Projects that includes a new light box installation by Monira Al Qadiri.

There’s also Spiros Hadjidjanos‘ solo exhibition, Pre-digital Space at Future Gallery in Berlin, AirBNB Pavilion, including work by Maja Cule and Rosa Aiello in Italy’s Bari, the Panda Sex group show, with Andreas Angelidakis and others, plus more.

Here’s a list below and we’ve definitely missed loads but #nofomo.

EVENTS

Arca + Jesse Kanda @ ICA, November 27

Harry Burke + Eloise Bonnevïot @ tank.tv, November 27

Objective Considerations @ MOT Projects, November 27

#quoax Twitter event by HOAX Publication (online), November 27

The Free Sea screening and discussion @ GV art, November 28

Networked Voices @ Dana Centre, November 29

WORDS END YEAR @ SLOPES Projects, November 29

CASTILLO/CORRALES 3rd Annual Benefit Raffle, November 29


OPENING

Got Tortilla with Butter on Phone. Think it’s the End? @ Rod Barton, November 28 to January 17

Quake II @ Arcadia Missa, November 28 to December 12

Candice Jacobs @ DKUK Salon, November  28 to December 24

Panda Sex @ State Of Concept, November 28 to January 17

Never Never Land @ EOA. Projects, November 28 to January 31

Spiros Hadjidjanos @ Future Gallery, November 29 to January 10

Aimee Heinemann @ Grove House, November 30


NOW ON

Future Polities @ Auto Italia, November 24 to January 5

Emily Jones @ Jupiter Woods, November 23 to 30

Alternative Equinox @ French Riviera, November 25 to 30

AirBNB Pavilion @  63rd-77th STEPS, November 27 to December 15

He He He He He … @ MilMa, November 27 to December 21

biotic / abiotic @ The Gallery Apart, November 26 to January 24

Pipolitti Rist @ Hauser & Wirth November 26 to January 10 **

Header image: Marian Tubbstypical quasi-coy, digital print on silk (2014). Image courtesy Arcadia Missa.

  share news item