10 Oct 2007 - 1 Feb 2008
The Window Gallery Seduced Show
Overview
Bondage, lust and forbidden desires are immortalised through public works of contemporary art in a series of provocative shows exploring the concepts of sex and seduction in The Window Gallery Seduced Show.
Fifteen shows runs in partnership with The Barbican’s Seduced: Art and Sex from Antiquity to Now and will feature work by thirteen female and six male artists. Shows will run throughout the night, seven days a week until Feb '08 and viewing is free.
While The Barbican’s show looks at sex throughout the ages, The Window Gallery Seduced Show looks at sex and seduction today via photography, sculpture, performance, painting, time-based projections and instillations.
The Window Gallery Curator John O’Hora says:
"This a highly unique and accessible exhibition that will not only grab peoples attention but really make them think about their own and societies' attitudes towards visual representations of sex & seduction.
Seduction is primarily experienced in terms of surrendering to encounters that we find strange to explain. It toys with our senses before we know how to name it, simultaneously manipulating and captivating us. Seduction melts us - as it were - leaving us humble but hooked. It pushes itself forward by suspending our other senses and leaves our other emotions in disarray.
Nineteen artists employ and explore a wide range of gestures over four months in representing their expressions on Sex & Seduction in The Window Gallery”.
The Window Gallery Seduced Team are:
Jung Eun Yoo, Henna Yoon, Oliver James Hymans, Joao Paulouro Neves, Tereza Buskova, Freya Gabie, Hector de Gregorio, Masaki Yada, Mary Hadhad, Josie McCoy, Sanja Sakic, Sayaka Motani, Ana Lorraine Lui, Lia Anna Hennig, Pablo Chiereghin, Rachel Fuller, Joanna Hill, Sebastian Winnett & Charles Ogilvie.
October
The FIRST installation opens with the work of Central Saint Martins graduate Hector de Gregorio. Hector’s work is a contemporary and uncompromising expression of his radical view on the look of desire, pain and pleasure.
His work is made up of a series of large printed images titled: Waxing (for pleasure), Extasi ,Voyeur and Bunny of God. Hector's imagery is a cocktail of Baroque, iconography and postmodernism styles used to accentuate the drama, importance and general values of the experience of sex, and promises to launch The Window Gallery Seduced Show with a sense of purpose.
SECOND instillation on Friday 19th October is by Sanja Sakic in a work titled Frames. Sanja explores references to erotica, fetishism and transparency. Working with plastics, fabrics, lighting and fruit, her paintings straddle and question the surface and framing of the two and three dimensions.
The FINAL October show - opening Friday 26th will be the first of five performances presented in The Window Gallery. Czech artist Tereza Buskova works with Zoe Simon and Joni Levinson in a live performance titled Beauty for One Day. Tereza says,
'"Beauty for One Day" is influenced by Czech folklore, traditions and magic in exploring human sexuality and the dark side of these traditions and rituals.'
TIMETABLE FOR TEREZA'S PERFORMACE:
Friday 26th start 5.30pm - 5.50pm
Saturday 27th start 3pm - 3.30pm
Tuesday 30th start 6.30pm - 7pm
November
November kicks off with the two-phased creation of Pablo Chiereghin, Birthday Suit. Pablo’s interactive work sees volunteers peering at his naked body while at the same time being immortalised as art. This phase of his work exploits the viewers’ voyeuristic tendencies in an act of role reversing. The naked photographer photographs the faces of his subjects as they gaze back on his nakedness framed behind glass.
Phase two of Pablo’s work - later in the show - will see the images of his peering public displayed as a series of voyeuristic faces. Watch this space!
Failed pornographers Sabastian Winnett & Charles Ogilvie take up the pace with the work Untitled (Charlemagne Productions).
Sayaka Motani and Masaki Yada, both from Japan, work with the symbolism of fruit in reference to seduction. Sayaka’s 3D instillation Hairy Pear/Banana/Avocado mocks a jeweller’s window display - exhibiting hybrid objects of body parts and fruit in the North Window. Meanwhile in the South Window Masaki’s paintings, titled Forbidden Fruit, depict outcomes of desire and temptation.
Ana Lorraine Lui presents a provocative shadow puppet show in Pierce Me (The First Embrace). Mindful of the voyeuristic gaze, her work explores the voyeuristic tension present in seduction. Fired by the fantasy of the wedding ritual, her performance exposes the ‘sacred intimacy’ between lovers during the first courtship.
December
animate:SPACE present The House of Seduction in December. animate:SPACE are Jung Eun Yoo, Henna Yoon, Oliver James Hymans, and Joao Paulouro Neves. This established, dynamic performance group explore the house through a series of rooms - Draw me, Baby will invite the audience on a 7 day journey into the internal, uncanny spaces of the house, confronting disconnected stories and images related to the body and the subconscious.
German artist Lia Anna Hennig begins her performance by coating the North Window in chocolate. The artist, dressed in white, then proceeds to lick the window clean. Afterwards her stained white dress will remain in the South Window, echoing the tongue marks left on the glass of the North Window.
Rachel Fuller says her work ‘is a way of breaking free from the two dimensional experience of painting’. Rachel’s 3D paintings reveal expressions of opposing tensions between the forces of seduction and rupture.
Joanna Hill seduces her viewers in slowing the pace down with her projections of Pomegranates and Oysters. Joanna says,
‘Food is part of our everyday lives, woven into a complex set of needs and behaviours - nourishment, pleasure, denial, decoration, personal and social. It is my intention to reflect our different relations to pomegranates and oysters. The form, colour and texture; and the physicality of handling in preparation; anticipation, desire, sensory pleasure; the history, association and myth; personal experience and memory. Enjoy.’
For Christmas Freya Gabie dresses both windows in curtains made from masking tape.
Freya’s instillation work draws the viewer inside these incredibly seductive curtailed spaces, suggesting feelings of entanglement yet leaving one wanting more.
January
In January 2008, realist painter Josie McCoy will occupy both windows and seduce us with two large portraits of Leeloo - the character from the film ‘The Fifth Element’ played by Milla Jovovich.
Mary Hadhad’s paintings CLOSE the show with work that question the stories of angles, particularly the one who came to seduce the mother of Jesus. Hadhad’s marriage of myth and belief tells truths that become one in a story.
