 Milika Muritu video Tealeaf Kevin Francis Gray, Richard Hughes, Susanne Kohler, Matt & Ross, Milika Muritu, Mark Pearson, Richard Priestley, Bob & Roberta Smith The title of this show was selected for it's everyday, belt-and-braces, business as usual inflection. The artists have been selected as a career cross section of London based artists whose selected contributions deal with issues of personal introspection in a way that lends itself to the "reading" of the signs in the tealeaves left at the bottom of a teacup. The implication of this practice may allude to a wistful desire to escape the impoverishment of the artists cell-like studio, spare room or bedsit, where the vehicle for the "work" (canvas, paper, raw materials) becomes the focus for the window into their inner world to be opened. Although the notion of reclusive introspection being manifest in artists is not necessarily exclusive to East London based practitioners, the artists selected for "Tealeaf" reflect this notion within the context of the show. The term "tealeaf" is also cockney rhyming slang for a thief. The romanticised tone of the slang may conjure a gypsy, traveller, poacher or rogue. This romanticism, born of the Victorian era, may also be deemed to allude to the hallucinogenic period of self-indulgent introspection in Victorian England within the bohemian world of the artist, writer, actor and dandy. Like human magpies, these artists collect, hoard and covet artefacts, icons and imagery which catalogue the vision of their minds eye which they offer to the audience as document of their introspection. "Tealeaf" reflects the curatorial stance taken at Cell, an East London based artist led project, whose mission is to exhibit the work of established artists alongside the work of emergent ones, supporting a non hierarchical network amongst practitioners, and allowing for experimentation and cross-fertilisation without commercial constraint. "Tealeaf" is a window in to the artists who are working with Cell in London, and into Cell's own identity. Exhibition: 17 October - 21 November 2004 Cell Project Space 258 Cambridge Heath Road GB-London E2 9DA Telephone/Fax +44 020 7241 3600 Email info@cell.org.uk www.cell.org.uk |
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