arebyte 2018 Programme

Islands

Reflecting on recent local and global socio-political changes, the programme is looking at the idea of dislocation and association of space, from both physical and theoretical aspects. Presenting a series of exhibitions which approach the theme in various interrelating and converging ways, Islands examines notions of autonomy, ecology, occupation and colonisation shaped and contained by the nature of islands and will include works by local and international artists.

With a look to the more physical interpretations of the word island, the works in the first group exhibition of the programme, titled on my island none of this would be true curated by Chris Rawcliffe, shows work relating directly to London City Island, and the UK as a whole, as way to expand on historical and contemporary references to feelings of isolation, separation and escapism.  

Continuing this relation to communities or inhabitants of islands, multimedia artist Lawrence Lek proposes an alternative future for housing with his installation Nøtel, which both criticises urban development schemes and the aesthetic advertorials they require, as well as questioning affordability and scarcity of space in the Capital with relation to rising rent prices and inflation.

Our young artist development programme hotel generation '18 expands on the notions of networking communities and scarcity of space by looking outside of the Capital for emerging artists, and giving precedence to those who are located in smaller cities and areas of the UK.

With his exhibition Fellowship of Citizens, Saemundur Thor Helgason develops on the notion of labour and how it is financially acknowledged.  The project criticises the lack of economic value and precedence given to creative industries and to those with precariously salaried jobs, and seeks to demonstrate the feasibility of a financing scheme which operates as an economic island. The exhibition elements – comprised in part of a new short film and installation-based works acting as effigies to the process – demand a rethinking of the ways in which we consume commercial and capitalist ways of living.