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studio 1.1: 'The Damned and the Saved' - 5 Dec 2008 to 21 Dec 2008 Current Exhibition |
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ANDREA GREGSON
ALEX HEATON |
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studio1.1 and Standpoint present: 'The Damned and the Saved' December 5 21 2008 Wed Sun 12-6pm Private view Thursday 4 December 6-9pm with Craig Andrews, Jay Cloth, Shaun Doyle and Mally Mallinson, Michele Fletcher, Deborah Gough, Andrea Gregson, Stephen Harwood, Alex Heaton, John Holland, Chris Humphreys, Keran James, Matt Lippiatt, Cathy Lomax, Kate Lyddon, Fiona MacDonald, David Micheaud, Aaron Miller, Brian Morrissey, Liam O�Connor, Andy Putland, David Shillinglaw, Lalie Schewadron, Annie Whiles, Tom Wolseley. Does art still have a role to play in promoting morally sound belief systems? Is the realm of the imagination a free zone? Does the devil still have all the best tunes? Standpoint Gallery and studio 1.1 are delighted to bring you The Damned and the Saved - a collaborative exhibition that explores contemporary images of humanity and the environment which divide unevenly and in an unresolved manner into visions of a morally upstanding and beautiful planet versus a dirty, bedraggled, dog-eat-dog world. Split both between the two venues and the classical themes of 'Portrait' and 'Landscape'; Standpoint will be peopled with souls in transport or torment and here at studio1.1 we will present their various hells and/or Edens. The onus as ever is upon the viewer to judge. The glorious history of painting and sculpture as moral education for the illiterate no longer applies now we can all watch TV instead. Notions of good and evil, heaven and hell, moral and immoral have become more complicated, even subdued. Artist and critic Ronald Jones said that art can't do evil because today it is not serious. �Culture frames art in an unserious way; it makes exceptions for artists and doesn't take them seriously. So the past and potential impact of art is dissipated, removed, immunized. It's just art.� Yet there is a converse argument that suggests we map the world, including moral obligation, through imagination. Shelley said "A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensively and comprehensively... Poetry strengthens the faculty which is the organ of the moral nature of man, in the same manner as exercise strengthens a limb�. (Essay on the Defence of Poetry) When moral struggle goes out the window, when we don't conceive of our activity as having any ethical weight, we begin to lose substance, become vapid uninteresting creatures. The artists in The Damned and the Saved make work that is implicitly or explicitly suggestive of moral dilemmas, of visions of paradise and hell both internal and external, and of the uneasy traversing of the invisible line between. Alluding to the Malibu melodramas of 'The Bold and the Beautiful'/'The Beautiful and Damned', we parody damnation in order to keep it at bay. We praise paradise and yet inevitably fall short, corrupting and sullying it, proving ourselves unworthy of our wildest imaginings. In this pre-Xmas extravaganza we can all go to hell in a handcart and come back clicking our heels, bringing our tails and Toto behind us. |
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