Between The Lines
26 January — 08 February 2016
This January GRAD hosts Between the Lines, a collaborative project by students from Goldsmiths University and ICA Moscow. Curated by Stanislav Shuripa, the exhibition prompts audiences to apply a critical eye to our social reality and look beyond the established narratives to ‘read between the lines’. Part of an ongoing programme of creative exchange between the two institutions, the works on display were created in response to a series of workshops and seminars undertaken during a 2015 summer school held at the Academic Dacha near the town of Vishniy Volochek.
Between The Lines
26 January — 08 February 2016
Curated by Stanislav Shuripa
Our social reality is produced though discourses and narratives. It is possible to establish a critical distance by being sensitive to unexpressed, connotative, indirect or even encrypted meanings. This cultural practice is well known, though it is perhaps more widespread than we think; many people achieve this distance through various means and for various reasons, sometimes unknowingly. Artists, however, are often conscious to it. This is a technique of indirect resistance that allows us to perceive and transmit meanings through implications, hints or hidden allusions. The artists featured in this exhibition approach this idea of reading between the lines on various levels and through diverse practices.
The practice of reading between the lines was an important strategy for unofficial cultures that existed during the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century. As a result, this action carries historical significance for contemporary Russian artists, who are once again using the technique to scrutinise the current contradictory political atmosphere. In more open societies reading between the lines helped to subvert the dominant ideologies through reinterpreting the images and meanings distributed by mass culture. Those who take this alternative stance can be seen as archaeologists of meaning, who excavate possible, secondary, or implied realities.
The artists featured in this exhibition make works that invite viewers to take part in the process of the production of meaning. Their works can therefore be interpreted as fragmented texts or statements with several layers of signification. Alice Kern, Ilya Plotnikov, and Maria Egorova refer to the tradition of the ready-made and objet trouvé – for them an everyday object is not only the beginning of a language game, but also a way to point to complex social structures and historical narratives. Evgenia Bonevert, Michael Dignam, Sophie Hoyle and Helen Knowles choose to explore the socio-political conditions of imagination through individual video works, where the movements of bodies, machines and images overlap, intersect and supplement each other as a means of mapping the connections between images, emotions and power.
Stanislav Shuripa
Participating artists include:
Francis Almendárez
Liza Artamonova
Sofia Astashova
Evgenia Bonèvert
Ilina Chervonnaya
Michael Dignam
Daniel Dressel
Maria Egorova
Sophie Hoyle
Alice Kern
Helen Knowles
Ilya Plotnikov
Masha Poluektova
Marina Rudenko
Himali Singh Soin
Sergey Tubashov
