We’re aware that we aren’t saving lives, however…

Through this exhibition we intend to explore the notion of the futility of art within our current society. Why is it that we do what we do? Especially when people outside of the art world often see it as a bit pointless. In many ways these people have a point. We aren’t doctors, we aren’t fire fighters, ‘We are aware that we aren’t saving any lives’ through our work. We’re not directly benefiting anyone apart from (perhaps) financially, unless an artist makes a point of using the attention of the audience to address and promote a political issue, which most don’t. Or there’s the fashioning of utile objects as art, which borders product design. We do what we do regardless of its benefit to the world. It’s this relationship to reason in artwork that this exhibition at The Pigeon Wing is addressing in a somewhat exposé deluge. You will see a group show of artists who have come to terms with the futility in artistic practice and embraced impulsive action as a crux of their creative process. The exhibition will include Jack Bishop (London) Matt Blackler (London) Constant Dullaart (Amsterdam) Trois Elementos (London) Joel Ely (London) Xavier Jimenez (Chicago) Karl-Oskar Olsson (Göteborg) Joanne Smithers (Edinburgh) and Theo Turpin (London).

Joel Ely's practice involves researching, appropriating and combining disparate elements of the histories, iconography, theories and fictions surrounding figurative art, nature, food and performance. This is realized through a bastardised approach to painting, sculpture, performance and installation. Turpin sees his practice as being a series of relationships, of objects to objects, to spaces, to situations and viewers. It is this system that draws on the functional value of the component parts and the dialogue between them. Karl-Oskar Olsson works with notions of play and humour, he appreciates the absurdities of his work as ways to create openness and dialogue. Jack Bishop’s new performance is tongue in cheek yet satirical in manor on perceptions of the British public, he addresses “how we are incredibly patriotic yet really bad at being patriotic… because… when it all cocks up we still love it because we gain a great British joke to laugh at”. Xavier Jimenez just graduated from Chicago Art Institute’s MA program, he creates suggestive gestures with text and image on expendable A4 print outs, like fly posters, he promotes that he is serious about not taking himself too seriously. Amsterdam based artist Constant Dullaart’s manipulation of the Internet and its most used sites is relentlessly entertaining and ingenious in its timing of unexpected interference with an interface that we as Internet users are very used to being a set way. Matt Blackler creates artworks using outmoded and labor intensive techniques that playfully hark back to a romanticised past. Blackler’s diverse practice ranges from still images to kinetic machines, with his artworks often presenting the aesthetics of their production. Quirky and candid, these display strategies demystify Blackler's complex investigations, luring viewers into his arcane and obscure practice. Joanne Smithers, in forming a link between fantastical animal mythologies, taxidermy and the human body, creates hybrids whose object-ness removes them further from the arena of the ‘natural’, and closer to toy-like, posing Smithers as a playful creator, though she is “not particularly an animal lover”. Lastly, the collective Trois Elementos who state that having fun is more important than creating ‘masterpieces’ “We make a conscious effort not to spend money on works simply to give them a higher status; rather we feel that last-minute solutions are often the most vibrant and successful.”

In bringing together these artists The Pigeon Wing hopes to portray an honest and entertaining show, one that is not over laden with forced reason but which is liberated by its acceptance of the truth that art is sometimes futile, while proving its well worth it non the less.