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Clifford Chance

Clifford Chance
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Arcus Pride Art Exhibition 2019

London

For the 2019 London Pride show I wanted to show the diversity of work being made in the UK. To that end I have asked established as well as younger artists to contribute, including artists across the LGBTQ+ family. This show marks the first time we have exhibited a trans artist and a gender queer artist. The artists' body of works represents a reflection of themselves as well as their practice. This exhibition is largely photo based.

Adam Wilson Holmes and Richard Sawdon Smith turn their camera on themselves while Emli Bendixen focuses on her own and other LGBTQ+ families. Gemma Marmalade uses her camera in the documentation of conceptual projects and we will also include documentation of the two live performances (at the opening) by Thierry Alexandre and Teo Robinson. Hannah Honeywill’s body of sculpture sees everyday objects queered. All the artists speak of their own diverse experiences in the universal language of art. Come join us in the conversation.

Michael Petry, London Curator

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Adam Wilson Holmes

Colby Jansen Bear October 2014 drawing

© Adam Wilson Holmes

Delicately performed, classically informed, and steeped in irony, Adam Wilson Holmes teases at the tensions of perception and identity, playfully adopting masculine tropes and social signifiers to reflect the modern man through a filter of satire. Underpinning the fine art practice of Wilson Holmes is a nod to queer culture’s ability to simultaneously celebrate and undermine. As seen in drag queen culture, traditional ideals are both mocked and endorsed. Adam employs this same theory to the performance of the male gender and social norms within his practice.

www.adamwilsonholmes.com

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Emli Bendixen

from the Home Life series

photograph

© Emli Bendixen

Emli Bendixen is a Danish photographer based in the UK. As a queer mother of colour, she is interested in the importance of representation and the idea of 'see it to see it to be it'. The images in this exhibition are from her project 'modern families' which aims to document some of the many constellations that make a family.

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Gemma Marmalade

from the Seed Series

photograph

© Gemma Marmalade

Gemma Marmalade is a British artist specialising in the radical intersections of photography, video and performance. Her practice playfully negotiates the authenticity of history, science and sexual politics.

Seed Series, part of a larger body of work called Green Fingered, posits the possibility that those of homosexual persuasion are more likely to have a visceral impact on the cultivation of plants. Accelerated growth, crop abundance and overall increased vegetational health were observed by German botanist, Dr Gerda Haeckel during studies of communal lesbian gardeners throughout the 1970 and 80s. Seed Series illustrates how research in the medical and social sciences has to date focused on trying to identify genetic and psychological traits relating to sexuality. At a time when research continues to find the 'gay gene', Seed Series coalesces aspects of gender and cultural studies with biological science through provocative visual representation. Gemma is a Senior Lecturer in Photography at the University of Derby and is currently conducting Doctoral research entitled In A Manner of Speaking: The Subversive Voice in Performance Art at the Cambridge School of Art, Anglia Ruskin University. Gemma has exhibited widely, including Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen; The Photographers' Gallery, London; The Apulia Film Commission, Bari; and the State Museum of Gulag, Moscow. 

www.gemmamarmalade.com

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Hannah Honeywill

Tumbleweed 2017

re-shaped gilt picture frames, installed at the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, Birmingham

© Hannah Honeywill

Hannah Honeywill is an artist-maker, predominantly combining her skills as both a sculptor and a furniture maker/restorer to make work, which reimagines and physically reshapes functional, everyday objects – frequently, but not exclusively, furniture. Her practice develops the argument that the 'mend', especially if disruptive of a common sense or expected narrative, will function as a queering tool within sculpture and drawing. The act of mending creates a curve, distortion, misalignment or even extension or prosthesis. 'I explore how the inflection away from what is meant to be invites the viewer to take part in the act of a queer speculation.'

www.hannahhoneywill.co.uk 

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About the artwork
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Richard Sawdon Smith

Richard Sawdon Smith as Robert Mapplethorpe (from the Dead Famous series) 2013

photograph

© Richard Sawdon Smith

Professor Richard Sawdon Smith is an internationally exhibiting and award-winning British photographer. He is Dean of Arts & Media at Norwich University of the Arts. He is a former winner of the John Kobal/NPG Photographic Portrait Award. He is on the Editorial Advisory Panel of the Journal of Photography & Culture, Co-editor of Langford's Basic Photography and The Book is Alive!. His photographs and writing are widely published. Sawdon Smith in his photography always attempts to question and subvert perceived wisdom about how we understand our own identity and subjectivity especially around issues of health, sexuality and masculinity.

www.richardsawdonsmith.com 

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london-pseudocide-2018

Teo Robinson

Pseudocide 2018

Performance by Teo Robinson at the Cello Factory, London as part of the Violence/Silence exhibition, photograph by Chalkie Davies

© Teo Robinson and Chalkie Davies 

'I'm an interdisciplinary Queer/Trans artist emerging into the London art scene after achieving a BFA in Studio Art at Concordia University in Montreal. I specialise in intermedia installation body based performance art. The concepts that I pursue in my performance are queer identity and gender performativity, masochism, trauma re-enactment, existentialism and duality, which creates, a sense of emotional exhibitionism. I use the darkest parts of the Self to propel my creations. My work is aesthetically defined as a term I've coined as Manic Expressionism. My art explores and reveals to the public my private emotional experiences, fears through a raw, cathartic healing process.'

https://teorobinsonart.wordpress.com/about/

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About the artwork

Thierry Alexandre

Defiantly unboxable, shamelessly subversive, disarmingly profound, truthful and vulnerable at once, Thierry Alexandre is a multimedia, genre defying artist creating spellbinding and wholly universal art interventions. Their innovative work unfailingly brings its viewers and audiences to contact their own emotional landscape, propelling us into a realm of wondrous visions, where sweet fantasy and bold reality fuse effortlessly. Using Butoh dance and philosophy throughout their work, Thierry's all consuming mission is to engage, arouse, provoke, inspire and empower. They will present "INTERRUPTED", a reflection on their own gender identity in the formative years of childhood.

www.thierryalexandre.com

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