Lola Ramona
Jan Hakon Erichsen
Kerry Stewart
Rachel Lowther
Alex Baggaley
Martha Colburn
Aram Tanis
Geraldine Gliubislavich

Vampire Dreams/Stay in the Light presents eight artists whose work mines the rich vein (pun intended) of metaphor and imagery related to vampires. The exhibition takes as its starting point the figure of the modern European vampire, crystallised in Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula. Often portrayed as a charismatic loner who preys upon the living, this figure haunts modern and post-modern literary and cinematic imaginations. Vampires are linked to death and the quest for immortality. They possess glamour. Glamour is illusion, a mirage of presence that crumbles on contact. Each artist draws obliquely and humorously on the tangle of associations with infection, rebellion, yearning, darkness, seduction-as-danger, consumption, loneliness and gothic romance intrinsic to the vampire myth, relating them to contemporary concerns and to art-making practice itself. Bypassing Hammer Horror clichés the works on display, which encompass sculpture, drawing, painting and installation, acknowledge the compelling aspects of dissolution and corruption in the vampire story without acceding to cynicism. They stay firmly in the light.

Lola Ramona
Los Angeles-based performance and 2D artist Lola Ramona’s graphite pencil drawings fuse mythology, religious iconography, fairy tales and pop culture into surrealist cadavre exquis composites. These sly, lavish creations skirt a liminal space between childhood dreams and adult nightmares. As part of Vampire Dreams/Stay in the Light Ramona exhibits two drawings, Well Meaning Monster and Puck’s Big Catch. A fusion of Bacchus and the American Eagle, Well Meaning Monsters is a commentary on the United States’ policies during the Bush administration, and on the draining effects of narcissism and self-delusion. Puck’s Big Catch is inspired by the body building documentary Pumping Iron. It makes a dig at action heroes versus political apathy and the sludgy stasis of stoicism by depicting the Governor of California as a mischievous and saturnine hybrid clutching a soft bunny rabbit. Ramona has exhibited her work at various US venues including The Museum of Contemporary Art in Atlanta, Gallery Revisited in Los Angeles and The Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston.

Rachel Lowther

British artist Rachel Lowther lives and works between Brooklyn, New York, and Glasgow. Her work includes installation, sculpture, drawing, sound and video. For this exhibition Lowther shows a new sculpture inspired by an old coat formerly inhabited by rats and discovered in a Brooklyn garbage dump. The coat hovers above a lozenge pattern carpet (a motif taken from a friend’s dream) and is literally filled with recorded sounds of the artist’s daughter chewing food. These sounds leak into the gallery space. Openly and “vampirically” appropriating a symbol from someone else’s imagination Lowther’s contribution collides metaphors of garbage, reverence, decay, consumption and childhood. Although it is a departure from previous work the piece echoes Lowther’s ongoing interest in the magical, talismanic potential of art objects. Lowther has shown nationally and internationally, at galleries including Participant Inc, NY; Gallery Vilma Gold, London; Emily Tsingou Gallery, London; Sculpture Center, NY; Citylights, Melbourne; Maschenmode, Berlin; and The National Portrait Gallery, London.

Aram Tanis

Seoul born, Netherlands based artist Aram Tanis photographs urban architecture and human bodies whose contours do not adhere to conventional notions of beauty. His photographic installations plumb topics of loneliness and isolation and are populated by a cast of outsiders unable or unwilling to inhabit the mainstream. For Vampire Dreams/Stay in the Light Tanis has created an installation entitled My Gradual Submission to You. This new work incorporates images shot in a horse slaughterhouse combined with photographs of individuals playing equine-themed sadomasochistic games of power and control. Tanis’s use of black and white film endows his subject matter with elegance, restraint and a gravitas that steers clear of morbidity. Juxtapositions and connections are made between consensual and non-consensual forms of submission; Tanis’s horse role play artists are actors in their own game and consciously relinquish some of their humanity. The animals in the slaughter house, reminiscent of torture victims, have made no such choice and are acted upon. Tanis completed his MA at The Ateliers in Amsterdam in 2006. He has exhibited widely in the US and Europe. Exhibitions included Museum Winterthur, Palazzo Pepoli Campogrande in Bologna, The F.U.E.L. collection in Philadelphia, Witte de With Rotterdam, FOAM Museum for Photography Amsterdam and Ministry of Culture The Hague.

Jan Hakon Erichsen

Norwegian artist Jan Hakon Erichsen transforms evil daydreams into ominous, slapstick vignettes. His videos, photography and installations lay bare the perilous potential of domestic objects. For this exhibition Hakon presents Falling Down, a looped video which transforms a slatted household blind reminiscent of a thriller film prop into a homemade guillotine. Whenever a pedestrian passes the window the blind drops, execution style, with a sound reminiscent of snapping teeth. Erichsen’s black humour and dexterous editing transforms a everyday item into the star of a funny, subversively understated mini-drama of revenge and retribution. In 2007 Falling Down won first prize in the one minute section of the Video Rats festival in Celje, Slovenia. Jan Hakon Erichsen has exhibited widely at national and international galleries and film festivals including The Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art in Oslo and the Optica festival in Paris.

Alex Baggaley

British artist Alex Baggaley works in a variety of media including drawing, collage, sound and sculpture. He also collaborates with performance group P1orn. Baggaley’s amorphous and experimental practice blurs boundaries between life and art, often highlighting the artist as a solitary entity functioning outside conventional networks of currency and exchange. It has included improvised dance, an anonymous performance whereby he asked shop keepers to give him free items and, in i cycle fatal path, his recent solo exhibition at London’s Alma Enterprises, pencil and ink drawings rendered from memory, of locations visited during full moons. For Vampire Dreams/Stay in the Light Baggaley shows a new piece that combines mirror and collage. Alex Baggaley has exhibited and performed his work at a range of national and international venues including Alma Enterprises, The Kitchen (NYC) and Thread Waxing Space (NYC).

Kerry Stewart

Scottish artist Kerry Stewart makes installations and sculptures that infuse, toy-like imagery with sinister and bathetic undertones. Previous sculptures include Sleeping Nun and Follower, based on one of Charles Manson’s female acolytes. Stewart’s sculptural characters are often encased in glazes of dissociation; wandering, frozen and parted from themselves. These fragmented figures seem superficially contained but give off turbulent atmospheres of loneliness and dread. For Vampire Dreams/Stay in the Light Stewart will be showing paintings made from hobby and craft materials that feature couples and appropriated imagery. Stewart first came to attention during the nineties when her piece ‘the boy from the chemist is here to see you’ was included in the Young British Artists exhibition at the Saatchi gallery. She has exhibited her work widely in Europe and the US at venues including the Liverpool Tate, Marian Boeski Gallery (NYC), Centre for Contemporary Art (Glasgow), Stephen Friedman Gallery and Centro de Arte Salamnca, Spain.

Martha Colburn

American animator and film maker Martha Colburn creates densely layered film collages that mix live action animation, found footage and documentary techniques. Her work humorously and sometimes disturbingly investigates popular culture, consumption, politics and sexuality. Colburn also makes collages, paintings, installations and live performances. For Vampire Dreams/Stay in the Light Colburn screens her 2 minute Super-8 film Evil of Dracula (1997). Evil of Dracula employs advertising imagery from the nineteen fifties and sixties to comment on the deadening and addictive properties of consumerism. In Colburn’s film vampires are seductively cheerful and upbeat parasites who drain consumers of life force, agency and imagination. Colburn has shown widely at museums and galleries including the Berkeley Art Museum, Centre Pompidou Paris, Whitney Museum of American Art New York, The Luigi Pecci Centre for Contemporary Art Prato (IT), Museum of Contemporary Art Lyon, Serpentine Gallery London. Her solo show can currently be seen at De Hallen in Haarlem (NL). Martha Colburn is represented by Diana Stigter, Amsterdam.

Geraldine Gliubislavich

French artist Geraldine Gliubislavich attended the Arts Décoratifs in Strasbourg and Central St Martin’s Byam Shaw college in London. Gliubislavich uses photographs of anonymous crowds and group settings as the basis for her haunting paintings. These paintings carry traces of the imagery from which they originate, mutating them into vaporous and open-ended surfaces that captivate and trick the eye. Gliubislavich describes her handling of texture and mood as a contamination of photographic source material. Her amorphous, gothic atmospheres suggest vaporous, cave like environments populated by ghostly, faceless figures gathered together to celebrate an unknown event. Gliubislavich is currently selected for the Jerwood Contemporary Painters Exhibition 2009. Exhibitions have included IM ART Gallery in Seoul and Grusenmeyer Art Gallery Belgium. Geraldine Gliubislavich will have a solo exhibition at De Nederlandsche Bank in Amsterdam in April 2009.

© Aline Duriaud 2009

Check out this dope action figure!

Here is some more work from Rosemarie Fiore. She’s using some interesting methods for sure…

the vital force of onedotzero, wow + flutter presents international new creative expression exploring motion graphics, character animations, enhanced digital and short experimental works across a wide range of disciplines spanning architecture, fashion, illustration, graphic design and beyond.

it showcases new creatives alongside acclaimed talent, highlighting new approaches to graphic storytelling and future visual trends in motion.
includes world premieres and works specially produced, a capsule visual ideas lab.

approx 70 mins

mischa rozema: postman returns / netherlands / 02:26
david o’reilly: wofl 2106 / ireland / 03:18
simon robson + chris atkins: celebrity [excerpt] / uk / 00:50
kristian labusga: rebel with a cause / germany/ 02:18
crush: the gum thief [glove pond one] / canada/ 01:20
trevor jiminez: key lime pie / 03:32
ryan molloy: the veneerists / usa / 02:45
claus-maria zimmerman: destination sex city [elixir exotique] / usa / 02:25
minivegas: aides - boy / uk / 02:45
suryummy: interstellar sugar / usa / 01:34
leftchannel: chocolate / usa / 01:04
rob rae: fading object / uk / 02:42
james houston: big ideas [don’t get any] / uk / 03:55
váscolo: índico / argentina / 01:38
superstudio: lamole /argentina / 00:45
martin böttger + bruno dias:tractor / germany / uk / 03:39
maxim zhestkov: 005 / russia / 01:35
minivegas: aides - girl / uk / 01:00
zurich29 + etienne constantinesco: ink [amnesty international] / france / 03:03
yves geleyn:dandelions / france / 01:02
marco di noia: la scimmia dell’inchiostro / italy / 01:30
yoshi sodeoka: blind side of a secret / usa / 01:49
andras ketzer: le trippin / uk / 01:56
susanne luechtrath + anton riedel: lautlos [without a sound] / germany/ 02:14
ritxi ostáriz [iikki]: viva calaca / spain / 03:05
crush: the gum thief [glove pond three] / canada / 01:20
bernard stulzaft: trem / france / 2008 / 04:30
domenico bartolo [21-19]: in motion / australia / 01:36
will adams: terrafarmer / uk / 01:40
wayne horse: bunchy hunkky / germany / 01:15
tomas gárcía [peppermelon]: the fabulous farting valley of fat-farts / argentina / 02:06
rex crowle: grip wrench [the presidator] / uk / 02:30