Seth Price / Kelley Walker / Continuous Project
28 April to 1 July 2007
Press View: Friday 27 April, 11am to 1pm
Modern Art Oxford presents the first major exhibition in the UK of work by New York based artists Seth Price and Kelley Walker and the art and publishing collective Continuous Project.
Both Price (b.1973) and Walker (b.1969) engage in a disruption of the cultural mainstream as it is defined by images and objects. Packaging, piracy and the circulation of artistic production within present day culture are elaborated in a multi-disciplinary approach encompassing paintings, sculpture, and photographic and film-based work. Adopting strategies indebted to Conceptual and Pop Art and post-modernist appropriation, Price and Walker also display a predisposition for the hand-crafted and the hands-on in a body of work that is as exciting and playful as it is thoughtful and, at times, provocatively disturbing.
Price describes his works as "non-specific form" in which text, sampled music, imagery and objects assume variable and interchangeable supports. Vacuum packed bomber jackets, wrap-around sculptures and found video and film footage from archival sources or downloaded from the internet can be found within his expansive repertoire.
Walker physically intervenes in images and their circulation using the reproduction technology of the flatbed scanner and printer, highlighting tensions and contradictions of race, social class and culture as branded and consumable items. Large scale and portable recycling logos rendered in a faux-gilt gold and silver foil and ceiling mounted, rotating disco balls cast in solid chocolate, assume a deeply ambivalent presence hinting at viral proliferation and explosive devices.
Continuous Project is an art and publishing collective comprising Bettina Funcke, Wade Guyton, Joseph Logan and Seth Price. The group work with image, text and archival documents to mine the cyclical relationship between art and spectatorship. Their project of transporting historical material into the present via facsimile has recently taken on the dimension of performance in staged re-enactments of conversations and panel discussions between artists, critics and curators.
The exhibition, presented across all of the galleries at Modern Art Oxford, includes new and recent work by Price and Walker. Continuous Project have devised the concept for the publication and will present a staged reading during the opening day of the exhibition. The publication will document the works in the exhibition and will include essays by art historian Robert Hobbs, writer Jan Avgikos and curator Suzanne Cotter. As part of the exhibition, videos made by Seth Price between 2000 and 2006 will be presented in May as part of a series of special screenings at Modern Art Oxford and the BFI, London.
The exhibition is curated by Suzanne Cotter, Senior Curator at Modern Art Oxford.
For further details about Modern Art Oxford telephone +44 (0)1865 722733 or visit www.modernartoxford.org.uk
Ends
For information, images and to arrange interviews please contact Sara Dewsbery, sara.dewsbery@modernartoxford.org.uk or call +44 (0)1865 813813.
NOTES TO EDITORS
Seth Price
Born 1973. Solo exhibitions in 2006 at the Friedrich Petzel Gallery, New York, Reena Spaulings, New York, Electronic Arts Intermix, New York and Galerie Isabella Bortollozi, Berlin. Selected group exhibitions include a collaborative performance and video project with Kelley Walker at The Kitchen, New York (2007); Uncertain States of America at the Astrup Fearnley Museum, Oslo (2005), Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, New York (2006), Serpentine Gallery, London and Reykjavik Art Museum, Iceland (2006); and Grey Flags at the Sculpture Center, New York (2006).
Kelley Walker
Born in Columbus, Georgia in 1969 and educated at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, 1995. Solo exhibitions in 2006 at Galerie Catherine Bastide, Brussels, Belgium, Power House Memphis, Paula Cooper Gallery, New York and Rheinschau Cologne Art Projects. Selected group exhibitions in 2006 include USA Today at the Royal Academy of Arts, Guyton, Price, Smith, Walker at the Kunsthalle Zurich, Switzerland, Grey Flags at the Sculpture Center, New York, Day for Night at the Whitney Biennial, New York and Uncertain States of America (see Seth Price information above for details of touring venues).
Continuous Project
Continuous Project’s performances and installations include: Continuous Project #1 (a Xerox of Avalanche’s first issue, 1970) at Michelle Maccarone, New York, May 2003; Continuous Project #4 (Xerox of Eau de Cologne, 1984) at Passerby, New York, March 2004; Continuous Project #3(a Xerox of Qadaffi’s Essays and Fables), at CNEAI, Chatou, France, November 2004; Continuous Project #6: a Nine hour reading of an unpublished interview between Virginia Dwan and Charles Stuckey, Galerie Klosterfelde, Berlin, June 2005; Continuous Project #8, a book published with CNEAI, Paris, 2006, as well as an exhibition at CNEAI, Chatou, France, 20 May to 1 October, 2006 and Continuous Project #9, a performance and installation of a 1990 symposium on politics and images, presented at “Wieder und Wider/Again and Against: Performance Appropriated”, MUMOK, Vienna, November 2006.