The exhibition of mine and fellow artist Hilary Champion is up. Please join us tonight at the
"Bad News" private view. Cybersalon are also hosting their event the same night, Human or Machine and so you after the opening you might like to join them
Bad News
Newspeak House, 133 Bethnal Green Road, London
7th to 20th December 2017
7th December 2017 6pm to 8pm
Nearest station: Shoreditch High Street.
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PRESS RELEASE
LONDON, UK: The fictitious ‘Office for Global Improvement’ shouts messages in an attempt to micro-manage you. A small interactive effigy of the ‘orange one’ sits on a shelf with a set a pins with which to stab him, whilst another sculpture, taking its feed from Twitter comments on the suspected Russian interference in the US presidential elections. This art exhibition is certainly Bad News.
In this pop-up art exhibition, Artists Dd (Deborah Davies) and Hilary Champion explore, with more than a spattering of humour, various themes relating to power, politics, representation and conversation. Exhibiting at Newspeak House, in Shoreditch, London, UK, home for a community of political technologists, it is the ideal venue for the exhibition that runs from 7th – 20th December 2017.
OVERVIEW
With a long standing interest in American politics and her passion for combining art with technology, Deborah Davies (Dd) is exhibiting two pieces of work:
Faded Glory and #DicktatorDon: ‘Making America Great Again….One Prick At A TimeHilary Champion is exhibiting one piece of work:
Messages From The Office For Global Improvement. This work critiques the bombardment of the public by a constant stream of over-zealous advice, warnings and veiled attempts to micro-manage many aspects of people’s lives.
THE WORK
Dd’s Faded Glory represents the ebb and flow of conversations on Twitter around Russia’s suspected interference in the USA Elections of November 2016 and the subsequent fallout, such as the congressional hearings and the Mueller investigation. Taking its feed from the live Twitter API the conversations are simplified to a positive or negative statement about Russia’s alleged interference. The more negative the conversations, the stronger the Russian flag shines through the Stars and Stripes until it eclipses Old Glory completely. Combining textiles using a devoré technique to distress the fabric the work is combined with LED’s and electronics and a twitter feed.
#DicktatorDon: ‘Making America Great Again….One Prick At A Time’
This hand-made effigy of the ‘orange one’ is designed to be humorous in that you can literally poke fun at the 45th President of the United States of America. It invites participants to work out for themselves where they should prick him if they want to make his eyes light up. Throughout the last six months Dd has been sending a limited number of #DicktatorDons to those who apply for one online through the website. Some results of their interactions with #DicktatorDon will be on display in the exhibition. You can even apply to own your own and be part of this interactive and particular art work when visiting the gallery. This work is another example of how Dd’s art practice explores representation, empowerment, conversation and feedback..
In Messages From The Office For Global Improvement, Hilary Champion demonstrates her strong empathy with Noam Chomsky who believed that governments increasingly keep their populaces preoccupied with small questions so that they will not think to ask the big questions. In particular she critiques the bombardment of the public by a constant stream of over-zealous advice, warnings and veiled attempts to micro-manage many aspects of people’s lives. The warnings, enthusiastically disseminated by both conventional and social media, cover a plethora of topics. This includes the health risks posed by over-cooked chips, arsenic in rice and the threat to air quality posed by the methane produced by cattle. Working under the guise of the totally fictitious ‘Office For Global Improvement’ she produces hand-made screen-prints to satirize this relentless stream of pronouncements from armies of faceless bureaucrats. Gallery visitors will be encouraged to add their own experiences of spurious advice to those amassed from her previous showings of this work.
BIO: Deborah Davies (aka Dd)
Dd is an international exhibiting artist. She works in a variety of mediums from sculpture to installations, from soft-circuits to video and textiles. Many of her pieces are responsive, reacting and changing in response to participants’ engagement. She leans towards working with light.
In the early 90’s, Dd studied for a BA Hons in Photography at West Surrey College of Art and Design, UK. More significantly in her graduation year, her work was selected for the highly prestigious John Kobal Photographic Portrait Award. After graduating she had a successful career as a TV Producer/Director/Broadcast Journalist for a variety of broadcasters including the BBC. Having built up a body of artistic work, she left television when offered the position of Artist in Residence at the University of London’s Centre for Creative Collaboration (C4CC) in the UK, in 2010. During her time at C4CC, she became interested in wearable technology. Her views on this subject appear in the book “Designing with Smart Textiles” (London: Bloomsbury/Fairchild written by Sarah Kettley released, early 2016). Dd’s work has been included in London Design Festival, BetaHaus, KunstHaus Kule and KunstHalle Platoon in Berlin, Germany. She has also exhibited large scale sculptures at Burning Man in 2013, 2014 and 2016 with StarWay and interactive sculpture.
From 2016 – 2017 StarWay was installed in Playa Park, a public sculpture park in Reno, Nevada. #DicktatorDon is to be included in Sarah Staton’s SupaStore Human- We are the product at The Dikeou Collection, Denver, Colorada, USA in December in 2017.
BIO: Hilary Champion
Hilary Champion has always been interested in using her practice to critique what she feels are major issues. Reflecting her South Wales heritage, she began her career by devising sculptures and installations highlighting the involvement of Welsh plantation owners in the slave trade and sugar industry. Subsequently her work was a manifestation of her dream that one day all conflict and violence would have ended. In her latest practice she uses her experience of working in the advertising, PR and press industries and her interest in writers such as George Orwell , Noam Chomsky and Dr Ben Goldacre to critique fake news and the manipulation of the media by those with secret, vested interests. Her work was recently shown as part of Statement in Bloomsbury, The Waiting Room in Wandsworth Common Mainline Station ( where she exhibited a customized No Waiting Sign) and an exhibition at Brighton's Jubilee Library.
OTHER INFORMATION
For more images and more information, contact:
Artist: Dd (Deborah Davies)
Email: contact@dddavies.com
Twitter: @debbiedavies
Website: www.dddavies.com
Website: www.DicktatorDon.com
Instagram: dddaviesart
Artist: Hilary Champion
Twitter: @oforgi
Website: www.oforgi.org.uk
Website: www.hilarychampion.co.uk
Information about Newspeak House can be found here in a Guardian interview from June 2017
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jun/06/democracy-theres-an-app-for-that-the-tech-upstarts-trying-to-hack-british-politics
Opening Hours for Bad News:
7th December – 20th December
Open: Wednesday to Sunday from 12noon to 6pm. Closed: Mondays and Tuesdays
Late Opening: Wednesday 13th 6pm- 10pm
Private view: 7th December, 6pm to 8pm please email: contact@dddavies if you would like to come.
HASHTAGS #DicktatorDon # FadedGlory # BadNews # newspeakhouse
