Votive

Votive is an exhibition that delves into the notion of sacrality within contemporary culture. The show aims to bring together artworks that thoughtfully challenge the concepts of worship, canonization, and beliefs through a wide variety of mediums; painting, sculpture, video and drawing; exhibiting ten artists based in UK and Europe Aman Aheer (@amanaheer_), Tommy Camerno (@tommycamerno), Ruby Dickson (@rubyevedickson), Alexei Izmaylov (@ismyloveizmaylov), Noah Latif Lamp (@noahlatiflamp), Ankica Marjanovic (@ankica.marjanovic), Jon Merz (@merzjon), Giulia Messina(@le_mal_et_l_antidote), Eliott Mickleburgh (@bytebop), Jonah Pontzer (@p0ntz3r).

Votive explores the embodiment of sacrality in everyday life as Idoles and Icones have left churches and temples for concert halls, window displays and of course TikTok. Sweeps have replaced allgestural religious symbols and divinities disappeared from the speculative space of spirituality to enter the irrational proximity of technology. Artists selected for the show are balancing between the exploration of images as symbols transcending generations and becoming culturally significant, the rituals attached to the almost mystic and meditative aspect of art practices and the relation between spirituality and consumption.

Artists

Aheer’s

(UK based) work is nourished by an ongoing interest in religion and religious aesthetics, drawing on the symbolism and iconography found across religious traditions. His interest extend to the paradox of humiliation and humility, and how gestures of submission, crawling, and prostration are inextricably linked to the aesthetics of desire in many religions.

Camerno’s

(UK based) practice captures objects in moments of decadence, depicting the gestures of falling down and rising again. Images of divas, dandies and balconies are entangled between layers of abstraction. he question codes of behaviour and lifestyles within society – looking at the things that surround us, what endures, what divides and what shines through the gaps.

Dicksonh

(UK based) appropriates pop culture icons and cartoon characters to analyse contemporary modes of production, circulation and consumption of images, which she addresses in relation to the specific temporality and materiality of paint.

Izmaylov’s

(UK based) practice ping pongs between image making and sculpture. His work is composed of original objects and procured industrial elements that together evolve as part of a propositional ecosystem – threading together notions of play, power, consumption and illicit desire.

Lamp’s ( UK & NL based) work explores themes of identity, culture and representation. In his self-portraits, he reflects on the works of other artists, questioning the idea of originality and ownership in the art world. His work is an expression of the black experience, re-appropriating aesthetics that have been stolen, white-washed and commodified by dominant cultures.

Marjanovic’s

( UK and DE based ) work revolves around the interplay of displaced realities, dreams and inventions. She uses her conscious and subconscious mind in daily ritual drawings. The dream is a truth that is filtered, treaced, differentiated. Marjanovic’’s art is interwoven with themes of femininity and the societal influence of religion, while always incorporating autobiographical elements into the broader spectrum of the human condition. A natural creeping contemplation of the insane, the rotten, the deformed and the abstruse, of implied failure and sublimity.

Merz’s

( CH & DE based ) recent paintings show surfaces on the edge of abstraction and announced images of landscapes, figures and mundane scene. From visions of utopian places, to darker dreams and inner spiritual worlds – Merz work combines an analytical approach with affect and gesture speaking to our metamodern reality.

Messina’s

(BE based ) work rely on the ritual of hosting. Each work is preceded by a participatory situation in which Messina embodies the role of a caring host: she prepares a homemade feast, a banquet installation an offering to her guests, By consciously observing the left-over mess and the traces of human consumption, her practice explores how these behaviours hide thoughts of emotional journeys, and lead to a reflection on the psychological aspects of relationships.

Mickleburgh

( UK based ) project XX.XX.XX is a reflection on the biblical Annunciation that is executed through the eclectic materials that emerge during the production and representation of luxury commodities such as clothes, jewelry, and cosmetics.

Pontzer’s

(UK based) delves into the transitory nature of contemporary visual landscape: glimpses of reality and distorted humanity are reading as cultural symbols disconnected from society. The interaction of various media, hues, moods, and textures creates unexpected connections among diverse and fragmented visuals. All works on paper, their techniques undermine their physicality, resembling the glow and glare of the screens that monopolise the increasingly digital experience of the physical world.