SPECTRUM at CHART Art Fair

SPECTRUM at CHART 

The performance programme is at the year’s edition of CHART works with demonstrating the vitality of colour and showing how it can be relevant, engaging and complex in a series of conceptual performance art works.

The diverse variety of performance artists is curated by the English curator, writer and editor Francesca Gavin. Gavin has primarily invited Nordic artists who work with different elements such as, architecture, sound, lighting and textile. The artists will create individual performances but are asked to work within the shared thematic of colour in creating their works.

Colour has a bad reputation. From the Grecian concepts of aesthetics though 20th century modernism to contemporary conceptual art, colour is often described as something about spectacle, emotion, expression, the irrational. The responses and experience colour creates in a viewer is often downplayed as simple sensationalism. This programme of performances aims to resist this redundant argument.

The performance programme of CHART draws on David Batchelor’s concept of ‘chromophobia’. He argues, “colour is made out to be the property of some ’foreign’ body – usually the feminine, the oriental, the primitive, the infantile, the vulgar, the queer or the pathological. Colour is relegated to the realm of the superficial, the supplementary, the inessential or the cosmetic… Colour is routinely excluded from the higher concerns of the Mind.”

The aim of these works is to reposition colour as something equally important as line, idea, and form in the creation of art. Show that colour is something important outside of the expected mediums of painting or graphics. That colour can be an intelligent way to engage with politics and meaning, and has an important role in contemporary cultural production and communication.

The artists in this programme will invited to draw on the idea of the spectrum or create a performance around a specific colour (so there could be an excitement amongst viewers to ‘collect’ the experience of different coloured performances).

PERFORMANCES

FRIDAY the 21st of August

ToriWrånes

Norwegian artist Wrånes creates dramatic aural audio works. Featured in the Sydney biennial and the last Performa, her space-specific performance works that often use hanging elements, props, costume and architecture. For CHART, she will perform a “vision for the future”.

SATURDAY the 22nd of August

SirraSigrún Sigurðardóttir

Sigurðardóttir’s work focuses on interactive spaces and projects that investigate the idea of the spectrum, space and movement. For CHART, the Icelandic artist will create a Prism performance-installation working with colour as visual information gained from scans of viewers invisible radiant energy.

David Mullett & Duncan Ransom

Director David Mullett is unveiling his first abstract psychedelic virtual reality work as part of the performance programme of CHART. Trained at the Royal College of Art, Mullett is founder of VR agency Virtualize and has written about innovations in Virtual Reality for Dazed, Sleek and Blackbook.

Duncan Ransom is the founder of The Endless, a high-end Virtual Reality content creation studio. With over 10 years experience working for major VFX studios in the feature film industry, he is currently focused on the development of delicious augmented and virtual reality based environments, interactions and applications.

SUNDAY the 23rd of August

Nadine Bryne

Swedish artist Nadine Bryne creates works that reflect an interest in ritual, nature and femininity. Alongside a practise that includes sculpture and film, her performance works have incorporated textiles, dance and fabric elements. For CHART, she will create audio-visual work inspired by the projection and contrast of colour.

Julie Verhoeven & Peter Jensen

Verhoeven’s chaotic performative installation works include objects, sound, sculpture, moving image and painting. She has also created collaborative real time performances at the ICA, London and moving image performance with Jimmy Merris at the Hordaland Arts Centre, Norway. She is creating a new performance inspired by the colour spectrum for CHART.

Peter Jensen was born in Denmark and educated at Central Saint Martins in London. He established his brand in 1999 and is known for a mastery of colour and print, with work that crosses between fashion, art and graphic image. He has collaborated in the past with Tim Walker, Dover Street Market and Topshop, and a retrospective of his work was exhibited at the Copenhagen Arts Museum in 2011. 

Spectrum Risograph Print Project

This commissioned project is a series of six limited risograph prints each inspired by a different colour in the spectrum, which will be given away free. The project aims to rethink ideas of value and consumption within the context of the fair with works that explore wider ideas about the colour spectrum. The contributing artists are Alex da Corte, Clare Woods, James Hoff, John Korner, Peter Linde Busk and Richard Coleman.

Francesca Gavin

Gavin is a curator, writer and editor based in London. She has curated international exhibitions including E-Vapor-8 (319 Scholes and Site Sheffield), The Dark Cube (Palais de Tokyo), and The New Psychedelia (Mu). She is also the Visual Arts Editor of Dazed & Confused, Art Editor of Twin and contributing editor at Artsy.net, Sleek, Le Pan and AnOther. She has written five books including ‘The Book of Hearts’, ‘100 New Artists’ and ‘Hell Bound: New Gothic Art’ and is the curator of the Soho House group collection.