THE ENIGMA OF WILLIAM TELL AND OTHER TALES

STEVE BISHOP, WILLIAM COBBING, JOE CURRIE, ANNE-KARIN FURUNES,DALLAS SEITZ

S.T.O.R.A.G.E: ANNA CHRYSTAL

27 JUNE - 3 AUG 08

The Agency is pleased to present a group show of sculptural works by British artists Steve Bishop, William Cobbing, Joe Currie, Canadian Dallas Seitz as well as two large perforated canvases by the renowned Norwegian artist Anne-Karin Furunes.

The exhibition takes its title from a controversial painting by Salvador Dali, yet, rather than referring to Dali himself it plays on the continuous echo of surrealism in art practice after modernism. The individual artists use either literal or technical refererences to the uncanny and the early modernist canon. All of them have shown in entirely different contexts and this exhibition binds them together in an examination of the surreal proposition. In Britain Surrealism took hold for a very short post-war period, much later than the continental movement and largely in sculpture rather than painting. Herbert Read coined the term Geometry of Fear for sculptors such as Kenneth Armitage and Lynn Chadwick, who did not fit comfortably with Hepworth, Moore et al, but touched upon mythology and expressive means of representation. The sculptures of the Geometry of Fear were a short blip, presented in the British Pavillion at the 1952 Venice Biennale. Recent works by British based artists seem to remind of the importance of this movement.

Dallas Seitz's new sculptures delve directly into surreal references to Magritte and Dali, translating painterly language into sculpture, as well as playing on primitivism, which was the basis of much of the modernist attempt to break with representational conventions. In Ate , he presents a sculptural version of a modern-day cannibal's head from the South -pacific island of Vanuatu, the contemporary explorer's dream of discovering untouched tribalism. His second sculpture takes the taylor's dummy, common to surrealist iconography for the female body and de-feminises it, by replacing the head by a museal sponge, both reference and critique to museal preservation and curatorial mythmaking. Found objects in the style of curiosity cabinets open the possibility for multiple interpretations. William Cobbing's sculptures work with unexpected combinations of the real and the prosthetic, with the object and figures often conjoined in unexpected ways. In Sitzmachine the torso of a male figure vanishes in the back of a Marcel Breuer chair, the figure is like a growth to the chair or vice versa. Neither figure nor object make sense other than in their awkward combination and yet formally it appears as if the structures need each other for balance. Cobbing refers to the uncanny in scientific as well as psychological terms. Joe Currie's cast silver cow has a beak of a prehistoric bird of prey attached. Scientific references to cloning also play a role here as much as the desire to amalgamate real and mythological creatures with a knowing nod to the fact that science has progressed to being able to create the mutants of the modernist imagination. Steve Bishop presents a stuffed fox suspended on lighting rods that pierce the body like stakes, imbuing the work with a theatrical force. The inanimate neon-tubes appear to be giving movement to the dead animal, which is presented like a trophy. Anne Karin-Furunes wallbased perforated paintings are black punctured surfaces seen close-up, yet, when viewed form afar present photographic portraits of Finnish Soldiers from WWI. Furunes uses a technique whereby monochromatic canvases are perforated with multiple holes to create a non-space within the portrait emerges, thus appearing like a mirage. The works remain suspended between realism and the romance of a distant and unclear memory.

All the works presented here are on the brink of realism and yet play on double-take and dreamlike shifts both in presentation and meaning. The result is both poetic and disquieting. The sculptures and paintings whilst adhering to their genres become dramatized and performative. In the case of the British based sculptors a new tendency seems to bind them together, which seems to not only refer to modern day urban myth making and the surrealism of sci-fi but also an echo of post-war British sculpture. Modernism and its many movements are currently seeing a re-surgence in contemporary art, not least since there is a need to re-address what once revolutionised art and lead to the dissolution of genres. In a spectacular return to genres a critique of museal archiving takes place in synchronicity with a re-examination of iconography and mythology in contemporary art.

Steve Bishop has just graduated from the RCA and is included in the new Contemporaries for the second time. He recently also showed in Soul Stripper, curated by Charles Danby in Projet Midi Brussles. He lives and works in London.

William Cobbing graduated from St Martin's in 1997, as well as De Ateliers in Amsterdam in 2000. He shows with gallery Fons Welters in Amsterdam as well as having completed recent projects in TENT Rotterdam, the Camden Art Centre and the Freud Museum. He lives in London and Amsterdam.

Joe Currie also graduated from the RCA in 1999 and has since completed commissions for the British film industry and other public projects as well as currently having a solo show at V22 Ashwin Street in London.

Anne- Karin Furunes is represented a/o by Anhava Gallery in Finland. She lives and works in Trondheim, Norway. She has recently had a solo show at Barry Friedmann gallery New York and was represented in the Bejing Biennale in 2005.

Dallas Seitz lives and works in London and Banff, Canada. He has recently had solo shows in the Pump House and Carter Presents and will be part of a presentation at 176 Gallery, which also houses Anita Zabludowicz's collection.

ANNA CHRYSTAL

Rose-Tint My World

The Agency is pleased to present the first public exhibition of young British photographer Anna Chrystal with a series of recent photographs, mainly presented in small-scale prints. Anna works exclusively photographically, often with spontaneous snapshots, which are juxtaposed in loose narratives in a diary fashion. What is refreshing is that she does not seek out to present a social underground, like much of Nineties photography, which fulfilled a/o the important role of documenting subcultures and street-life for the first time. On the contrary she is part of a generation where the shockvalue of the underground has gone, as everything is immediately commodified, and yet the geeky innocence of first-time experimentation still cannot be quantified other than by that feeling of either being there or remembering the moment.

Anna Chrystal presents a diary of the mundane and the accidently freakish with a slight- of -hand photography, which doesn't distinguish between snapshot and carefully planned shoot. It all could be staged, but then it could have gone wrong in the moment. It somehow hits the spot in combination. Her personality seeks out the weird and the wonderful as if the world around her is a burlesque circus of her own imagination, as she seeks out the pathos in the utterly ordinary. The series, which is presented here, presents the maybe fashionistas and the suburban party kids of her generation with the curious bewilderment of self-recognition and uncontaminated irreverence. Observing and participatory without judgement her camera is in wonderous dialogue with her environment, objects, animals, places and people alike. Everything she personally finds slightly bizarre or just odd is recorded with a childlike curiosity. The viewer gets to share the lightness of her subjects play-acting and her own excitement about moments, which are systemically not exactly calculated.

She allows her subject to pose as much as they wish and at the same time she seems compelled to press the shutter just outside of the moment that was planned not only by her subjects but also by her. Because she doesn't stick to her notes, the photographs are honestly romantic, uncontrived and like a young girls' trophies of curious moments. They inevitably find the freakish elements of the deeply uncool and subconscious abandon, while co-incidentally recording her own reaction of surprise. She arranges the photographs into personal juxtapositions, often arranged by colour rather than theme, which give her mini-series' an Alice in Wonderland-type wow factor. Anna Chrystal does not make a distinction between art, documentary or fashion photography and brings together "accidental" shots into random succession, governed by a fly-by- the- seat -of -my pants passion rather than serious editing. Rose-Tint My World is one of her series', which tells a random non- story of personal encounters with nightlife in the city, without a care in the world.