DOUBLE PARRHESIA

KATHRYN ELKIN   ADAM LEWIS-JACOB   MARIA TOUMAZOU

3nd February – 21st February 2017 | Opening Preview: 2nd February, 6-9pm

DOUBLE PARRHESIA considers the potential of shared cultural memory, affectual labour and self-organisation, to generate new modalities in contemporary art practice and institutional activism.

This project draws its title from Gerald Raunig’s essay ‘What is a Progressive (Art) Institution?’ which considers how an art institution can become part of a political multitude by making use of Michel Foucault’s concept of ‘parrhesia’. Raunig envisions an art institution that performs a ‘double parrhesia’; of both criticising hegemonic power and disclosing the truth about its own position. Each of the artists involved in the exhibition have practices which oscillate between the self and the collective, individual practices and artist-led initiatives. This duality, transition and exchange between positions has the potential to carve out a space in which to cultivate collaboration, test methods of sustainability and generate a radical collective consciousness.

Kathryn Elkin’s performance and video works concern role-playing and improvising and typically manifest through citing a referent- such as an artist, a song, a writer, or performer – upon which she applies personal methods of translation, transcription and representation. ‘Film 2016’ was exhibited at CCA Glasgow as part of a major solo exhibition titled ‘Television’ in 2016. Elkin has shown work throughout the UK, including ICA, London; Tate Modern, London; Collective Gallery, Edinburgh; Transmission, Glasgow; S1, Sheffield and CCA, Derry. She is the recipient of the 217 Warwick Stafford Fellowship at Northumbria University and teaches part-time at Liverpool John Moore’s University.

Based in Nicosia, Cyprus, Maria Toumazou’s practice identifies and rehearses gestures that mediate the tensions of material and affectual labour. In 2011 she co-founded Neoterismoi Toumazou (Neo Toum), an artist-led space and a collective in Nicosia. She is also co-founder of the publishing imprint MARIA†.Editions based in Nicosia and New York. Toumazou completed a BA in Art Practice Goldsmiths College where she was awarded The Nicolas and Andrei Tooth Traveling Scholarship in 2011 and her MFA from The Glasgow School of Art in 2014. Recent exhibitions of her work include ‘Vanity: How to burn bridges you haven’t build, Garage, Nicosia; BRADLEY xx, Glasgow International 2016, Glasgow; AyeBaDome:Super, Thkio Ppalies, Nicosia; and í drögum, Akureyri Art Museum, Akureyri.

Glasgow-based Adam Lewis-Jacob primarily works in video, animation and installation. Through the development of collaborative methodologies, Lewis-Jacob sets up situations of shared authorship and an exploration of filmmaking as a space for relinquishing total control; incorporating traces of process and performance, amidst a surplus of objects, information and images. He is the co-founder of the artist run exhibition space Celine and a current committee member at Transmission Gallery in Glasgow.

Photography by Jordan Hutchings.