stchadsprojects@gmail.com
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Nose. Older brother turned enemy. Fire. Trouble breathing. Clogged. Protruding.
Gall bladder. Weak, cowardly, oh yes! I am timid and afraid. A stone. I love you but lack courage.
Missed opportunities, publicized. I am shy.
Small intestine. Small but long. Very long. Chaotic.
But also orderly, a path. But a path that is difficult to navigate, no end in sight. Knotted.
None of us perceive the complexities underpinning friendship, nor do we seek to.
Congested. Lack of imagination. Utterly knotted.
Pancreas. Defense. Wall between you and me.
Emerging from mud unsullied, the magician performs tricks.
Excerpts from My Body is a Reincarnated Population
by Oscar CHAN Yik Long
Cristiano Di Martino
‘La penultima ora’
Earthenware glazed ceramic, Steel, candles wick, nylon tread
50x63x56cm
‘Nel buio delle Ossa’
Earthenware ceramic, stoneware ceramic, rope, steel, nylon tread
60x140x50cm
‘Dreamless sleep’
Site specific Installations
Unfired terracotta
All 2024
Oscar CHAN Yik Long
We stopped looking for monsters under our bed
Chinese ink, Indian ink and wall paint on wall
Site specific
2024
Cristiano Di Martino
‘Borrowed Time’
Earthenware Glazed Ceramic, Steel
36x46x27cm
2024
‘Untitled’
Earthenware glazed ceramic, steel
42x56x34cm
>>>PIECES
This is not the whole story. The Hunters Enter the Woods is one of The Unicorn Tapestries, seven early modern Flemish tapestries currently in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum in New York.
The Met places The Hunters Enter the Woods as the first in the sequence. But the tapestries are famously shrouded in mystery and speculation; questions remain open about the order of the sequence, whether there are any missing pieces, and whether these seven tapestries ever really constituted a unified set.
This isn’t the whole story, clearly. The hunters are not even in the woods yet. The main event of the unicorn, which appears in all the other Unicorn Tapestries, is still out of shot here. We’re at the edge of the forest, and we’re still on the periphery of the heroic narrative of the hunt.
Sam Keogh’s collage installation and performance The Hunters Enter the Woods Cartoon takes the peripheral scene of the hunters entering the woods as a starting point, before cutting to a close-up on the peripheral figures of the page boys.
In the original tapestry, these pages have been tasked with guiding and facilitating the noblemen on their unicorn hunt. The noblemen, who appear in fine, colourful garb with elaborate plumage on their hats, are the main characters. This is their hunt. Their story. Their spears and hounds. But the wealthy tell their story as if it’s the whole story, when it isn’t.
What happens if the story is told by the minor characters of the pages instead? Follow the gazes of the page boys, and find yourself led outside the edges of the pictorial frame. The plot wanders off, beyond the familiar framing, as the spectacle of aristocratic heroism is decentered and made peripheral.
As with all large-scale tapestries from this period, The Unicorn Tapestries would have been extremely expensive. Objects like these were commissioned by the wealthy merchant and aristocratic classes – and since it was their money, the pictures had to tell their stories of morality and conquest and grandeur.
But The Hunters Enter the Woods Cartoon zooms in on a part of the woven image, to find alternative plot threads that lead beyond its frame. There are always ways to look at images while looking at the limits of their frameworks. Always ways to digress from the main plot; to puncture its semblance of wholeness, to misread its details, and to follow tangents that lead outside the limits of its frame.
As with other pieces in Keogh’s Unicorn Tapestries Cartoons series, The Hunters Enter the Woods Cartoon explores the form of the preparatory cartoon in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
To make pictorial tapestries in this era, artists would start with 1:1 sketches on paper – preliminary cartoon fragments or “working drawings” that allowed them to figure out the elements of the scene and its overall composition.
In the final tapestry, the various image parts have been fixed in place, and flattened into a unified pictorial plane. But through the preliminary phase of the working drawing, Keogh enters into an image ecology of layers and seams and gaps and shifting relations.
The parts are still very much parts; they can be moved around and reassembled, maintaining a sense of disjuncture that also recalls early twentieth-century forms of collage, where found image fragments are brought into new hybrid entities.
Part of the appeal of the collaged image is that it maintains a sense of awkwardness in the relation of the parts to the whole.
The stitches in a tapestry are parts brought together to make whole pictures, just as the pixels on my screen are bundled together to form the letters I’m typing... But pixels and tapestry stitches are supposed to add up to a sense of smooth coherence, with the separateness of the tiny parts disappearing into the greater whole.
In contrast, Keogh’s collage-based installations bring disparate parts into alternative, busted wholes – in ways that feel provisional and propositional.
The seams between the parts are always visible; bits are pieced onto other bits with blue tape that doesn’t try to disappear.
Coherence is continually undone, and spaciousness is found within the brokenness.
As the pages from The Hunters Enter the Woods start to wander beyond the picture that frames them, their bodies start to change. Through the propositional incoherence of collage, they acquire the green heads and huge three-fingered hands of Tolkien trolls …
>>>possibly something to say here on their composite bodies marking what Keogh refers to as a transversing of fantasies, with part of the twentieth-century fantasy genre cut out and pasted into the projected fantasies of the wealthy sixteenth-century tapestry owners?<<<
>>>Holes: Having stepped outside the frame, the page-trolls are then able to get behind the pictorial plane. In the installation, they are seen climbing up the back of the picture, protruding above it, and puncturing it from behind – opening up new space within the plane, undoing its wholeness with an insistence on a hole-ness that lets other things in.<<<
>>>& something here on the parallel between moving from the noblemen hunters to the “minor character” pages who facilitate their hunt, and moving from the tapestry to the preparatory (paper) pages that facilitated the tapestry’s execution. The main characters of the wealthy noblemen, like the rarefied objects of their finished tapestries, are not supposed to appear with evidence of the amount of labour required to create and sustain them. The pages are supposed to disappear into the background, never taking centre stage. This background of labour comes to the foreground in The Hunters Enter the Woods Cartoon, where the pages are visibly messed up with marks and folds and tears, which accrue with each iteration of the installation and performance<<<
>>>Also want to say something about lushness and pleasure (and craft?). The gorgeousness of the colours? The dizzying scale of Keogh’s collage relates back to the huge expanse of the Unicorn Tapestries – as does the abundance of detail; the fullness of the image. In both cases, one senses the amount of hours that have gone into the making. But through all the attentive absorption and luxurious detail, Keogh keeps things unfinished and scrappy and provisional. So that they might become otherwise<<<
Published on the occasion of The Hunters Enter The Woods Cartoon by Sam Keogh at St. Chads 30th of May - 16th of June 2024
Amelia Groom is a writer and art historian who has published texts on mud and swamps, on Mariah Carey's refusal to acknowledge linear time, and on Beverly Buchanan's ruinous, environmental sculpture Marsh Ruins, among other topics.
PAPER WORK
John Costi
PV 3.3.2024 6 PM - 9 PM
Open by appointment 4.3.2024-30.3.2024
EACH SATURDAY EVENING AFTER ‘BANG UP’, UNCLE RECALL, AN I.P.P* INMATE RESIDING IN HMP PENTONIVILLE, ASTRAL PROJECTS INTO ST. CHADS PROJECT SPACE TO HOLD A SEANCE WITH A PAST SELF.
A 3 WEEK PROGRAMME OF SHARED RECITALS INCLUDING RAPS FROM FELTHAM, AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL PLAY READINGS AND LETTERS SHARED WITH COSTI’S MUM, St. Bridget, WILL OCCUR IN THE PROJECT SPACE.
BY ANALYSING RESTRICTED DOCUMENTS FROM YESTER-LIFE COSTI CLEANSES WRONG DOINGS, ADDRESSES PAST TRAUMAS AND CRITIQUES GOVERNMENT AGENCIES.
ENACTMENT AND RITUAL ARE THE MEETING PLACE OF PARA-POSSIBILITIES WHERE TIME LINES CROSS AND ALTERNATE REALITIES MERGE.
THE COULDA-BEENS AND THE SHOULDA-BEENS HOLD COURT IN SHARED REGRET AND RESENTMENT.
The Vessel
Chris Thompson
PV 25.11.2023 6 PM - 9 PM
Open by appointment 26.11.2023 - 13.1.2024
Reclaimed Pinewood Cupboard Doors
Stained 3x1 Timber
Mahogany Parquet, C. 1960
Wooden Dollhouse
Recticel
TV, C. 2000s
Butchers Block, fragments. C 1900
Ark of the Covenant (Miniature)
Cast, Bone (Numerous)
Eagle Cane
Golden Eagle, Pair
Fractured Elephant Ceramic
Broken Shredder Parts
Cheap Old Wardrobes
Pinewood Furniture Board
Broken Glass, Keys, Receipts
Wreaked Laminate Flooring
Flight Pins (Battlestar Galactica)
Bed knobs
American Flag
Mount Rushmore figurine
Old Books
Golf Balls (River)
Glass Eye (Stolen)
Wood Shavings
Opal Perspex
Stone Carving, Contemporary
Imitation
Silk, Blue
Fur, Synthetic
Soil
Mini Fridge (Well Stocked)
Duvet. Old
Exhibition Texts.
Duct Tape
Mammoth Rib Bone, c. 30,000.BC
Draw Runners. Lots.
Reclaimed timber; Stripped Out Parquet.
Recovered Stage Floor.
Repurposed Exhibitions.
Detritus, Sound.
Media:
Star Trek II Wrath of Kahn, 1982. © Paramount Pictures
‘Spocks Death Scene and funeral’
METAL GEAR SOLID, 1998. © Konami.
‘GAMEOVER Sequence’
‘The Best is Yet to Come’
Written by Rika Muranaka
Battlestar Galactica (2004), by Bear McCreary
2009.
‘So Much life’
‘Reuniting the Fleet/Roslin Confesses’
‘Roslin and Adama’
‘Grand Old Lady’
Metal Gear SOLID 4, 2008 © Konami.
‘Microwave corridor scene’
2023
water-resistance
Josephine Baker
PV 7.10.2023 5 PM - 9 PM
Open by appointment 8.10 - 28.10.2023
water-resistance
Asphalt, cables, chalk, charcoal, construction lights, copper, crocodile clips, dowelling, filler, glass, grit, oak, pigments, pine, plaster, plywood, rubber, sand, sawdust, steel tubing, tiles, timber, tulipwood
2023
VIKTOR TIMOFEEV
Circular Alphabet with word puzzle
Two-channel generative software
Link
2023
DAVID COOPER
UNCONSCIOUS DRAWING No.3
Bronze, concrete rubber, wax, human hair, heat shrink tubing, lagging, jubilee clips, tubing, white spirit, bitumen, ink, steel grate, mannequin stand, iron roof support, latex, lead, gauze cloths, wooden plinth.
2023
CAROLINA AGUIRRE
I want to be like you
Charcoal, sumi ink, natural pigments on layered paper
2023
David Cooper
UNCONSCIOUS DRAWING No.4
Bronze, rubber, latex, steel cable, gun foam, polystyrene, steel clip.
200 x 140cm
2023
GRIM GRIME GRIMER
Bora Akincitürk
Otto Byström
PV 2.6.2023 6 PM - 9 PM
Open by appointment 3.6 - 24.6.2023
BORA AKINCITÜRK
Andrei Karlov Suikasti,
Silkscreen print and silver skull pendant tied on raw linen
200 x 140cm,
2023
OTTO BYSTRÖM
Toys for Fulfilling The Nihilist’s Fantasy 1-4
cast aluminium, 3D printed resin, aluminium tube, steel bracket, wood
2023
OTTO BYSTRÖM
Overcoat of Exaggeration
PVC, digital print on georgette fabric (polyester), thread, cast aluminium, wood, cast brass, steel chain
2023
BORA AKINCITÜRK
Piss Baby
Silkscreen print on raw linen
200 x 140cm
2023
Do You Believe
Silkscreen print and aluminium tape on raw linen
200 x 140cm
2023
OTTO BYSTRÖM
Lonely Star
cast aluminium
2023
SURFING THE HELL REALM
Laurence Owen
with contributing artists
Alfred Boman
Beth Frey
India Nielsen
Kenneth Winterschladen
PV 15.4.2023 6 PM - 9 PM
Open by appointment 16.3 - 6.5.2023
SURFING THE HELL REALM
ZINE
• Alfred Boman
• Beth Frey
• Daniele Bolelli
• Eden McDowell
• India Nielsen
• Kenneth Winterschladen
• Korallia Stergides
• Laurence Owen
• Mickey Smith
• Mike Lay
• Timothy Morton
• Tom Hardwick-Allan
• Travis Jeppesen
• Ziggy Grudzinskas
Risk 5.0
204 x 110.5 x 18.5 cm, foam, epoxy, plaster, rice paper print, stickers, vent, hermit crab shell, ceramic beads, spray paint, polyurethane paint, varnish, rope, plastic hooks.
2023
Search Engine (with prints by Beth Frey)
200 x 115 x 35 cm, foam, plaster, jesmonite, rice paper print, rope, ceramic beads, spray paint, polyurethane varnish, acrylic paint, steel rods, wood.
2023
39.6012•N, 9.0701•W (with a painting by Kenneth Winterschladen)
200 x 118 x 22 cm, foam, plaster, hooks, rope, plastic, rubber, ceramic beads, spray paint, lacquer, polyurethane varnish, oil paint and pencil on board.
2023
Gnarly Lettuce (with a painting by Alfred Boman)
63 x 398 x 254 cm, foam, plaster, spray paint, wood, polyurethane paint, lacquer varnish, grip pads, hooks, rope, oil and acrylic on greyboard.
2023
Surfing the Hell Realm (with a print by Beth Frey and a painting by India Nielsen)
135 x 138 x 14 cm, foam, plaster, nylon strap, QR code, epoxy putty, spray paint, lacquer, utilitarian hooks.
2023
THAW
Estefanía B Flores
Joey Holder
Julie Maurin
PV 17.3.2023 6 PM - 9 PM
Open by appointment 18.3 - 11.4
Julie Maurin Just get through the goddamn day / One damn foot after another
Up-cycled crocs, polyurethane foam, spray-paint, epoxy resin, tin, human hair, electronic cable, rings
2023
Joey Holder
The Evolution of the Spermalege
SLS prints, spray paint
2014-ongoing
Estefanía B Flores
Garura, wings of resonant life [winged beast / fusion / effect]
Steel, latex, wood, resin, pigments, pewter, wire, spray paint
2023
Julie Maurin
They tear your heart out / There is a terrifying beauty to it all
Polyurethane foam, 1kg of dry worms, paint, pearls, roses, teeth
2023
Julie Maurin
F(e)ather
Drawing preserved in epoxy resin, heron foot, stickers, silicone, dried scorpio, car-paint
2023
Joey Holder
The Evolution of the Spermalege
SLS prints, spray paint
2014-ongoing
Julie Maurin
Spice Story
Found ceramics, pickles expired since 2009, plastic toy, wooden object, silicone, necklace
2023
"Goody-Goody"
Lumpsome
Dominic Watson
PV 18.02.2023 6 PM - 9 PM
Open by appointment 19.02 - 11.3
"Goody-Goody" Lumpsome
Paper clay, Water pump, Filing Cabinets, Ceramic Tiles, Portland Toilet, Beige Woollen Jacket.
Dimensions Variable
2023
”Goody-Goody” Lumpsome
Glancing across the shop floor, his fingers were distorted by the curvature of the thick glass they crept behind. Like well-fed sausages. He calmly withdrew his hand from the jar, taking with it a dusty pink strawberry bon bon. His fingers could barely form a fist around the sugared toffee. The hand paused from its withdrawal, resting motionless mid-air. It's at this moment I realised that the tepid little child had been looking at me. I was so engrossed in his embezzlement I hadn’t noticed. Our eyes met. Without blinking he raised the fist to his mouth, herding the piece of candy with an open palm into his tiny little gob. Mouth half open he bit down on the hard toffee. An act that showed a complete disregard for the nature of the candy. Led by his mother he moved towards me, circling the perimeter of the shop, stopping by the cashier next to where I was standing. His 3’4” commanded far more attention than it deserved. I’m almost certain he still hadn’t blinked. I watched as the boy slowly pushed the half-chewed confectionary to the front of his mouth, parading it like a hapless victim. He tilted his head forward until the sodden candy teetered on the edge of his bottom lip. His eyes still holding my gaze, he let the salmony globule fall to earth. It glided to the floor like Halley’s comet, followed by a tail of saliva. It lay at my feet in a puddle of congealed pink sugary spittle. Never has such a sweet tasting thing signified such a feeling of contempt within me.
Dominic Watson
Da Busch
Ernst Jandl
Haoqiao Jiang
Benjamin Cosmo Westoby
PV 19.11.2022 6 PM - 9 PM
Open by appointment 20.11 - 19.12
Haoqiao Jiang
304 Stainless steel six divided section compartment plate breakfast lunch dinner food serving container partition tray for school canteen company home daily use
Stainless steel, 150 x 115 cm, 2022
Stainless steel, 110 x 110 cm, 2022
Stainless steel, 100 x 85 cm, 2022
Benjamin Cosmo Westoby
A World of Echoes, walnut, birch, acrylic paint, 30 x 87.6 x 2.4 cm, 2022
Axolotl, walnut, birch, acrylic paint, 73.2 x 25.2 x 2.4 cm, 2021
Benjamin Cosmo Westoby
Axolotl, walnut, birch, acrylic paint, 73.2 x 25.2 x 2.4 cm, 2021
Haoqiao Jiang
304 Stainless steel six divided section compartment plate breakfast lunch dinner food serving container partition tray for school canteen company home daily use
Stainless steel, 110 x 110 cm, 2022
Benjamin Cosmo Westoby
A World of Echoes, walnut, birch, acrylic paint, 30 x 87.6 x 2.4 cm, 2022
Axolotl, walnut, birch, acrylic paint, 73.2 x 25.2 x 2.4 cm, 2021
Ernst Jandl
da busch, 1957
c——————————h, 1964
schmerz durch reibung, 1964
TAKE THE DAY OUT IN BASKETS
Rachel Allen
Edmond Brooks-Beckman
Tom Bull
Ben Westley Clarke
PV 17.09.2022 5 PM - 9 PM
Open by appointment 18.9 - 16.10
Tom Bull, Ask the Fellows who Cut the Hay, 2022, Playhouse, Bitumen, Foam, Straw, Plaster, Wood and Bothy, 2022, Playhouse, Clay, Straw, Stone, Soil, PVA, Steel Stove, Log Burner
Edmond Brooks-Beckman Empathic Proximities, 2022, Mixed Media On Canvas, 120 x 135 cm, 69 x 85 cm And 69 x 85 cm
Edmond Brooks-Beckman Empathic Proximities, 2022, Mixed Media On Canvas, 120 x 135 cm, 69 x 85 cm And 69 x 85 cm
Tom Bull, Ask the Fellows who Cut the Hay, 2022, Playhouse, Bitumen, Foam, Straw, Plaster, Wood
Bothy, 2022, Playhouse, Clay, Straw, Stone, Soil, PVA, Steel Stove, Log Burner
Tom Bull, 2022, Steel Stove, Log Burner
Tom Bull, Ask the Fellows who Cut the Hay, 2022, Playhouse, Bitumen, Foam, Straw, Plaster, Wood
Ben Westley Clarke, Cordoba 1919, Etching And Ink On Paper. 28 x 19 cm
Caravan Window (Last Goodbye) Etching And Ink On Paper. 28 x 19 cm
Ben Westley Clarke, Take The Day Out In Baskets, 2022, Oil on canvas, 40 x 50 cm
Edmond Brooks-Beckman Tefillin, 2022, Mixed Media on Canvas 69 x 85 cm
Ben Westley Clarke, Black River Child, Etching And Ink On Paper. 28 x 19 cm
Rachael Allen,
Frog in a box
Living at the end of the country means filling up slowly with zilch
Robin bloody with the chest of its victims
I am praying towards the Artex in the old and empty room
Take the day out in baskets
Anna Ilsley, Strangers In The Night, 2018, Oil on Board, 13 x 18 cm
Benjamin Orlow, Untitled, 2022, Stoneware, Terracotta and Flocked Wood, h 44 cm x w 28 cm x d 40 cm
Benjamin Orlow, Untitled, 2022, Stoneware and Flocked Wood, h 44 cm x w 28 cm x d 40 cm
Anna Ilsley, Walker, 2022, Oil on Canvas, 100 x 130 cm
Haroun Hayward, ICEBERG (Krakatoa Offkeys), 2019, Oil Paint, Oil Pastel, Acrylic, Gesso, Plywood Panel, Wooden Frame, 51 x 41 cm
Haroun Hayward, Nightdrive Through Babylon (Sun Setting Between Hills), 2021, Oil Paint, Oil Stick, Oil Pastel, Gesso on Wooden Panel, 94 x 63.4 cm
Simon Foxall, from left to right:
Too Late To Stay, 2021, Oil on Canvas, 45 x 35 cm
Together Forever 1, 2021, Oil on Canvas, 45 x 35 cm
Two Wind Turbines, 2021, Oil on Canvas, 45 x 35 cm
Night Officer, 2021, Oil on Canvas, 45 x 35 cm
Beautiful, But It Helps 2022, Oil on Canvas, 45 x 35 cm
Benjamin Orlow, Untitled, 2022, Stoneware and Flocked Wood, h 40 cm x w 28 cm x d 18 cm and h 40 cm x w 50 cm x d 23 cm
Benjamin Orlow, Untitled, 2021, Stoneware, wood and terracotta, Dimensions variable
Anna Ilsley, Beacon, 2021, Oil on Board, 42 x 30 cm
Crab Bisque
Simon Foxall
Haroun Hayward
Anna Ilsley
Benjamin Orlow
PV 12.3.2022 2PM - 8 PM
Open weekends by appointment 13.3 - 3.4
Photography by Ben Westoby
(Apart from image 8, 23 and 24)
stchadsprojects@gmail.com