Secret Agent 

Guest Projects Sunbury House 1 Andrews Road London E8 4QL
9 - 30 January, 2016

Curated by Hemera Collective Exhibition Assistants: Ninna Miranda, Ksenia Belash, Herman Rahman, Coralie Malissard, Flavia Dannunzio, Celin Bodin, Sze Wong, Laura Thompson, Megan Nixon, Dorothy Spencer

Sarah Beddington
Beth Collar
Aleksandra Domanović
Ye Funa
Mathilde ter Heijne
Aura Satz
Maud Sulter
Niina Vatanen


Events:

(play)ground-less: Collaboration, Creativity, Authorship
A day of talks and performance
16 Jan 2016, 2pm
A symposium on collaboration and authorship in partnership with (play)ground-less, Space in Between and Hi Barbara that will include talks and discussions with artists, curators and academics including Dr. Stevphen Sukaitis (University of Essex), followed by an evening performance reflecting on the subject of collaboration.

Film Screening:
Most conscious beings lack a permanent physical form
23 Jan 2016, 6-9pm
In their assemblage and individual subject matter, this collection of films approaches the subject of disappearing. As a performative act to assume the identity of the other, the banishment on the accusation of being ‘too real’, or the disappearance of a web domain amongst political shifts, each film articulates the difficulties of producers who ‘speak to transform reality, and no longer to preserve it as an image’. The title of the screening is borrowed from a text written by Aleksandra Domanović. Artists include Marie Yates, Pilvi Takala, Mikhail Karikis, Aleksandra Domanović, Oreet Ashery,

Wiki-edit-a-thon: Exhibition Histories
23 Jan 2016, all day
Join us and take part in a day of creating and editing histories online. We will be focusing on neglected exhibition and institutional histories, ensuring that there is greater access to information about radical, collaborative curatorial and visual art practices via the web.



Secret Agent is a group exhibition composed from the viewpoint of feminist authorship in contemporary art practices. The artists in the exhibition actively challenge the institutional structure of history and patriarchal authority – and imagine alternative narratives, often through the specificity of lens-based media. Acts of image-making, archiving, or guerrilla information tactics enable visibility and challenge relationships between author and authority. Each artist utilises language and the literary in dialogue with image-making to harness the intertextual, as archival photographs and stock footage are transformed through repetition, re-staging and re-imagining. Representation of western history through both image and text, with the inherent parallels between historical and photographic truth – and the legacy of radical image/text practice in the 1970s and 1980s – are central to the development of this exhibition.

The enabling of voice(s) of authorship whereby subjectivity is activated in order to challenge the ideology of individualism and the singularity of the art historical canon and history itself, is what Janet Staiger describes as the ‘technique of the self’. This consideration of the self in relation to, and together with others, draws away from the photographic as exacerbating difference or the implicated position of a directed camera, and generates an argument for collaboration and collectivity.

The exhibition title, Secret Agent, is inspired by artist Oreet Ashery and academic Catherine Grant, who describe feminist cultural production as an ‘invisible agent’ and generative informant for ‘different kinds of subjectivity and agency under patriarchy’. Grant suggests broadening notions of what constitutes primary texts, and exploring more rigorous methods of interactional, inter-subjective, or interdisciplinary approaches to critical analysis, also for artists’ to broaden auteurial imaging.

Joan the Woman – With Voice is a photographic light box by Aura Satz, which relates to the cinematic representations of Joan of Arc in early colour film. Within the light box is embedded sound composed and performed by Norwegian vocalist Maja Ratkje, to counter both the silence of the original film, as well as the Inquisition’s challenging and final silencing of the voice of Joan of Arc, and the three voices she allegedly heard. Cecile B. de Mille’s silent feature ‘Joan the Woman’ (1916), bizarrely starring opera singer Geraldine Farrar, is mostly monochrome except for the culminating flame sequence in which Joan of Arc is burned at the stage. This orange coloured climax was the first ever use of the Handschiegl colour technology, a semi-automatic stencilling process, which removed the painstaking labour of hand-tinting and hand stencilling, which characterised the introduction of colour in the film industry until then. The repetitive, menial and dexterous task of adding colour frame by frame was mostly relegated to female labour, and some film factories such as the Pathe laboratory in Vincennes employed hundreds of women for colour printing. The addition of colour onto the black and white stock often created layers of abstraction, accentuating the body’s disappearance. Colour, added by invisible female hands, frequently served to subsume the film’s actresses into a realm of abstraction.

The motif of the ‘unknown figure’ is a constant and repeated presence through works that explore visibility and disappearance. Niina Vatanen’s series Archival Studies/A Portrait of an Invisible Woman, 2014, expands upon this motif and is made using an archive from the collection of the Finnish Museum of Photography. In the selection of works presented here, Vatanen makes visible the processes, methods and decisions of photographic production in dialogue with the anonymous subjects from amateaur photographer Helvi Ahonen’s life. Through the re-presentation of the archive, the artist proposes the possibility of multiple interpretations of photographic images and historical narratives, and highlights the complexity of the relationship between artist and subject, and also the act of seeing.

Ye Funa’s practice is concerned with the relationship between the realities of everyday life, the perceived connection between authority and many areas of social life such as different power structures, ethnic groups and the fictional space of propaganda for the concept of ‘perfection’ in an ideological system, and utopian landscape. Therefore, the work is politically charged, subtlely engaged in pastiche, as a satirizing style of propaganda as well as rich in reference, parody, and irony of the uniformity of cultures.

The Future Was At Her Fingertips is a series of sculptures by Aleksandra Domanović. Focusing on the role of women and minorities as often overshadowed or misrepresented agents of technological innovation, Domanović’s sculptures subtly engage a history in which these objects have a semiotic and historical significance. The cigarette, in this instance, is rather a ‘torch of freedom’, a term coined by psychoanalyst A.A. Brill in the early 20th century and then used as a marketing scheme by pioneering ad-man Edward Bernays, who hired women to smoke publicly as an assertion of their social equality, while simultaneously

In the evocative and absurd film Look at that sky, 2011, artist Beth Collar playfully inhabits the mindset of Napoleon during his Russian campaign, and occupies this epic male narrative to play out her desire to take part in history. The film becomes a beguiling critique of the surveying viewpoint as a dominant strategy, and questions the heroic, individual historical figure in parallel with the film director as auteur amidst the collaborative practice of filmmaking.

Mathilde ter Heijne's Woman to Go, 2005 – ongoing, is a collaborative and interactive art piece of portraits of unknown women and biographies collected from all over the world, and is a project that will continue by incorporating six new unknown portraits from the collection at the Finnish Museum of Photography, Helsinki. Each postcard shows a portrait of an unknown woman that lived between 1839 (the birth of photography with the introduction of the daguerreotype in France and the calotype process in Britain) and the 1920s. On the message side of the postcard is the biography of a known woman who was influential or extraordinary in her time. These women, whose biographies are known, all struggled for their individual goals in a world where predominantly men or class hierarchy dictated what was thought to be worth remembering.

Maud Sulter was a writer, artist, poet and publisher who moved between a literary and visual practice; utilising vernacular language and images as a tool to create visibility for black women in dominant historical narratives, as well as highlighting the relationship between European and African histories and cultures. Her photographic practice was concerned with fragments, traces and disappearance and the intertwining of seemingly disparate cultures.

Procession by Sarah Beddington is a sculpture that questions how we look at history through a filter of the present. Archival images showing processions in Palestine in the early part of the 20th century, have been fitted to discarded sections of plastic drainage tubes from the present. These binocular objects are situated on a light-box table, to be moved freely and held up by the viewer for a more intimate experience in which the fragmentary and sometimes disconnected images unexpectedly come together when viewed through the device.. The work follows on from a performance event and subsequent film, The Logic of the Birds, revolving around ideas of landscape and freedom, walking and collective gatherings. The processional performance event originally took place in Wadi al Auja, next to the Jordan Valley in the West Bank of Palestine, which is in one of the most important areas for bird migration as well as being on a route inscribed by numerous human journeys of pilgrimage, exile and return in historical and recent times. The title of the performance and the film is taken from a 12th century Sufi poem by Farid ud-Din Attar, which describes the spiritual migration of birds setting out on a journey over difficult terrain in search of a leader, only to reach the conclusion that they themselves already embody the necessary collective leadership qualities.

BIOS:

Sarah Beddington is a British artist and filmmaker now based in London, whose work investigates the intersection between the historical and the contemporary, often in relation to journeys and migration, traces in the landscape, the power of the collective voice and walking as a means of affirming presence. Her work has been shown in many museums, galleries and film festivals including: City States, Liverpool Biennale; Les Rencontres Internationales, Centre Pompidou, Paris and Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid; Eastern Standards: Western Artists in China, MASS MoCA, USA; FIDMarseille International Film Festival; LOOP film and video festival, Angels Gallery, Barcelona; Vanishing Point, Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio. She has recently been shortlisted for the Paul Hamlyn Foundation award in the UK as well as the Artangel Open Commission, and she received a Bloomberg LP special commission in 2008. She had a research residency in 2014 at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds and previous artistic residencies include the International Studio and Curatorial Program (ISCP, 2002 – 2003) and Cité des Arts in Paris (2009 – 2010). She is currently working on a feature-length documentary film that uses birds and bird migration to look at stories of human migration in the Middle East.Her work is represented in a number of public and private collections including Arts Council England.


Beth Collar currently lives and works in Bristol, UK. She studied Sculpture at the Royal College of Art. She works in performance, drawing, video and installation. Recent projects and performances have been presented at The Rijksakademie, Amsterdam, NL; Raven Row, London, 2015; The Serpentine Gallery, London, 2015; David Roberts Art Foundation, London, 2014; Hayward Gallery, London, 2014; Modern Art Oxford, Oxford, 2014; and Flat Time House, London, 2014. Recent exhibitions include Fig.2 at ICA, London, 2015; The Cipher and the Frame, Cubitt, London, 2015; Anatomy of Anxieties at Edouard Malingue Gallery, Hong Kong, 2014; SOME CHTHONIC SWAMP EXPERIENCE at Tintype, London, 2014; Edition One residency at Detroit, Bristol 2013/14; From script to reading to exhibition to performance to print, Rowing, London, 2013; ANCIENT BRITAIN at The Woodmill GP, London, 2012; and The London Open, Whitechapel Gallery, 2012.

Aleksandra Domanović’s work is concerned with the circulation and reception of images and information, particularly as they shift meaning and change register, traversing different contexts and historical circumstances. Her works create strange taxonomies and manic associative chains that poke and prod at copyright laws, unpack the geopolitical implications of web domains, or explore, for instance, the model of exhibitions (the co-creation of the collaborative exhibition platform vvork.com). Domanović has been awarded the 2014/15 ars viva Prize. The ars viva exhibition series presents a selection of works by the three award-winners through 2015 at the Hamburger Kunsthalle, Galerie der Gegenwart; Bonner Kunstverein; and Grazer Kunstverein. Domanović’s recent solo exhibitions include: Glasgow International 2014, Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow, 2014; Aleksandra Domanović, firstsite, Colchester, 2014; The Future Was at Her Fingertips, Tanya Leighton, Berlin 2013; Turbo Sculpture, SPACE, London, 2012; and From yu to me, Kunsthalle Basel, 2012.

Ye Funa is a Chinese artist born in Kunming, now based in Beijing. She studied at Central Academy of Fine Arts, China and Central Saint Martins College of Art, London. Funa’s work has been recognised internationally, and presented as solo exhibitions at MoCA Pavilion, Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai; V Art Centre, Shanghai; Galerie Piece Unique, Paris; Dialogue Space, Beijing and in group exhibitions at institutions such as the Chinese Pavilion, La Biennale de Venizia, Italy; Beijing Minsheng Art Museum, Beijing; 798 Art Factory, Beijing; Hubai Museum, Wuhai; Ray Art Center, Shanghai; University of Toronto Art Center, Canada; Yuz Museum, Jakarta; 2nd Asian Art Triennial, Manchester; Arcadia Missa, London; Fondazione Claudio Buziol, Venice, Rotterdam, Taipei; E.J Contemporary Fine Art Museum, Dali and others.

Mathilde ter Heijne is a Dutch artist living and working in Berlin. Primarily working within the media of video, performance, and installation practices, she studied in Maastricht at the Stadsakademie (1988-1992), in Amsterdam at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten (1992-1994), and since 2011 has been a professor of Visual Art, Performance, and Installation at Kunsthochschule Kassel. Recent solo exhibitions include Performing Change, Museum für Neue Kunst, Freiburg, 2014; Woman to Go, Deutsche Bank VIP Lounge, frieze Art Fair, London, 2013; Olack!, DEPO, Istanbul, 2010 and Long Live Matriarchy!, Stedelijk Museum Bureau, Amsterdam, 2009.

Aura Satz has performed, exhibited and screened her work nationally and internationally, including Tate Modern, Tate Britain, the Hayward Gallery, Barbican Art Gallery, ICA, the Wellcome Collection, BFI Southbank, Whitechapel Gallery, (London); Experimenta, London Film Festival (London); Oberhausen Short Film Festival (Oberhausen); the Rotterdam Film Festival (Rotterdam); the New York Film Festival (NY); Festival du nouveau cinéma (Montreal); Gallery 44 (Toronto); Gertrude Contemporary (Melbourne); De Appel Art Centre (Amsterdam); and Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art (Gateshead). Recent and upcoming group shows include Mirrorcity at The Hayward Gallery, They Used to Call it the Moon at Baltic (Newcastle); 20th Biennale of Sydney: The Future is already here – it’s just not very evenly distributed (Sydney). Recent and upcoming solo shows include Chromatic Aberration at The Gallery Tyneside Cinema (Newcastle); Eyelids Leaking Light at George Eastman Museum (Rochester NY); The Trembling Line at John Hansard Gallery (Southampton); Her Marks, A Measure at Dallas Contemporary (Texas).

Maud Sulter (1960–2008) was an award-winning artist and writer, curator and gallerist of Ghanain and Scottish heritage who lived and worked in Britain. She exhibited widely and represented Britain at Africus, the Johannesburg Biennale of 1995. Her art has been acquired by numerous private and public collections, including the Scottish Parliament, the Arts Council Collection, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the British Council Collection, the National Galleries of Scotland, and the National Portrait Gallery in London. She wrote several collections of poetry, and edited a pioneering collection of writings and images, Passion: Discourses on Black women’s Creativity’ published by the imprint she founded, Urban Fox Press, ‘a revolutionary new press for the more radical 90s’. She was active in the Black feminist and lesbian movements, often inspired by African-American activists, artists and writers. She founded at gallery a gallery, Rich Women of Zurich in London’s Clerkenwell, and curated nearly 20 exhibitions. A recent retrospective of her work Maud Sulter: Passion was held at Street Level Photoworks, Glasgow in 2015.

Niina Vatanen lives and works in Helsinki, Finland. She studied photography at the University of Art and Design Helsinki, Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki, and the Department of Fine Arts at the University of Barcelona. Vatanen often uses simple, playful interventions to point our gaze directly at the photographic surface, revealing the act of seeing as an inherent element of photography, and explores perception in the interaction between the visible and the not visible. Her solo exhibitions included Beyond the Visible Surface, C/O Berlin, Berlin, DE; Archive Play, Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast, GB; Cloud Hunter’s Eyes, TR1 Kunstalle, Tampere, FI; in addition to group exhibitions at Athens Photo Festival, Brighton Photo Biennial, Danish National Museum of Photography, Palais des Beaux Arts de Lille, and others.

Guest Projects, founded by Yinka Shonibare MBE, and is located in East London. It provides an autonomous space for exploration and experimentation, and challenging work, which might not be shown otherwise due to commercial pressures in the market.

The exhibition is a touring and evolving composition, which follows from its previous presentation at the Finnish Museum of Photography, Helsinki to examine feminist positions of revisiting histories through lens and time based media.