THE HUT PROJECT ESCORT AGENCY WERE:
REZA ARAMESH
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Dave Beech is an artist, writer and Course Leader at Sheffield Hallam University. He is a regular writer for Art Monthly and other art magazines and has had solo shows at Flag gallery, London, The Trade Apartment, London, Sparwasser HQ, Berlin, Collective Gallery, Edinburgh as well as important group exhibitions such as Futurology at the New Art Gallery Walsall, Strike in Wolverhampton and Philadelphia, Nanoscopic Culture , London and Slimvolume . He was a prominent member of the young London art scene in the mid-90's, co-authored the book "The Philistine Controversy" and is the co-editor of the new art magazine The Internationaler.
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MARK BOULOS
My work interrogates the truth-claims of the moving image, and asks why video so powerfully coerces a suspension of disbelief. The genre of my work may be 'documentary,' but I don't report objective facts, and instead aim to undermine empiricism by representing subjective belief so devout that it becomes real. My films examine events in which ideas become material, performance becomes authentic, word becomes deed, transcendence becomes immanent, or mythology becomes history. With a combination of iconography and documentary, I aim for my work to synthesize the two antithetical modes of art that are the primitive and the contemporary: the authentic, religious object of art whose use-value is in ritual; and the digitally reproducible, immaterial projection whose use-value is in mass exhibition.
That is why I make films about religious ecstasy and political militancy. My films often quote from scripture, and the images recall pre-modern religious painting and iconography. But the characters are non-fictional, and the narratives are driven along the historical axis of Anglo-American/Middle East politics. Still, the language that constructs these narratives undermines the reliability of the narrators. Scripture, revelation, confession, bearing witness, and poetry are the tropes through which my characters simultaneously rely on a higher authority and undermine their own.
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BILL FURLONG
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SOPHIE HOPE
Sophie Hope's work inspects the uncertain relationships between art and society. This involves establishing how to declare her politics through her practice; rethinking what it means to be paid to be critical and devising tactics to challenge the notion of authorship. Sophie is currently working on Reunion, an ongoing programme of meetings, residencies and exhibitions between people based in the UK, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia, Italy and Macedonia to address the political potential of art practices in Europe (http://www.reunionprojects.org.uk/). She is also currently in residence on the Beyond Action Research Programme in Leidsche Rijn a large new housing development near Utrecht in The Netherlands where she is working with residents to co-author a play about a future archaeology of Leidsche Rijn, that charts the community's self destruction due to the heightened importance given to the individual, their private property and general satisfaction in life. Sophie co-founded B+B with Sarah Carrington in 2000 and continues to research and evaluate why and how art is being used in areas of regeneration (http://www.welcomebb.org.uk
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Kelly Large is interested in ideas and experiences of transmission and reception, particularly between artist, artwork and audience. Her recent projects explore individual and group relationships to communication, specifically the amplification, disruption and re-articulation of meaning when communicated over social, cultural and geographical distances. These enquires have resulted in projects that have used a range of distribution mechanisms such as FM radio, publishing formats and curatorial contexts as sites for making and presenting art including: Wish You Were Here 87.9FM in collaboration with STATIC for the Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art - a temporary local radio station that explored ideas and experiences of nearness and remoteness; QSL 107.1FM for Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art - an audio publication and radio broadcast that investigated the active relationship between artwork and listener; Doppler Effect - a research residency at Ocular Lab, Melbourne that archived the similarities and differences between local and global artistic pre-occupations and behaviours; and her curatorial work has been archived in the Curating Degree Zero Archive - a traveling collection of projects that explores critical and experimental approaches to curating contemporary art. She is currently undertaking research at the British Library Sound Archive to explore the archive's function as a site of social exchange.
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Current research interests
Version 1
Feeling a bit 'pre-seasonal', I'm interested in whether Chelsea hangs onto their title?
Version 2
I'm interested in a distant moment between 1925-27, when Andre Breton understood something of the inability of the marvellous to reconcile the 'world of facts' and 'inner reality of the mind', which for writer Raymond Spiteri meant "Surrealism remained stranded beyond art, yet before politics".
Version 3
A book project with Peer around the theme of art and democracy.
A book of interviews with artists who teach
A collaborative project with Southwark Council resulting in a piece of art installed in the Shad Thames/Tower bridge area of the city.
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ROB TUFNELL
Rob Tufnell is a Director of Ancient & Modern, a commercial art gallery based in Whitecross Street, London. He was previously the Curator of Turner Contemporary, Margate; Exhibitions Officer at Kettle's Yard, University of Cambridge and Assistant Curator at Dundee Contemporary Arts. He has also worked in the private sector for Modern Art in London and the Modern Institute in Glasgow.
