SUPERPOWERLESS

Connor Brazier

 7 - 19 April 2017

Imaginings of a non-nation, borderless where people roam freely and access is “all-areas” seems more pertinent than ever. Connor Brazier’s SUPERPOWERLESS investigates boundaries, location and divisions in souvenir-like objects and a fake embassy aesthetic.

These themes are antagonised and become a source of tension where the infrastructure of countries is investigated via logos, language and systems for display. The viewer is welcomed into a new land where proliferation of images is rife and the questions of boundaries and control are subjected to a light-hearted portrayal of repeated logos and buzz-words seen in The National Anthem (2017).

Our collective experience of tourism, trade and cultural exchange has been brought into question through recent political events. SUPERPOWERLESS aims to question the falsehood of nationality and the binaries it creates. The work bearing the same name as the exhibition sees acrylic football scarves act as memorabilia, and a way to invite questions about labour and exchange of both physical items and uses of language. Through branding the gallery as an embassy with decal stickers titled The Embassy (2017), SUPERPOWERLESS parodies a loophole in our understanding of physical borders between nations.

SUPERPOWERLESS is the first exhibition of the ‘Nottingham month’ of arebyteLASER’s 2017 programme titled hotel generation - a series of paired exhibitions by a generation of young artists from around the UK, all responding to either contemporary Ordinaryism, information overload, collective practice or reacting to the ‘extreme present’.

Connor Brazier's exhibition is paired with Minimum Crisis by Sam Hewland, opening on 21st April. Both artists have written about each others work in an attempt to contextualise their practice, and surrounding ideas, within the remit of hotel generation. 

Connor Brazier lives and works in Nottingham, he studied at NTU and graduated in 2015. Recent shows include, Castle Ruins at King Billy Pub, Nottingham, 14 Ways To Get Rich Quick with Scaffold Gallery and online with isthisit?, and inhabit, IOUAE's online residency. Connor is the current director and curator at HUTT Collective, an artist led gallery based in Nottingham.

He is interested in binaries, as a source of tension and investigation, a language, code or system of understanding. He is investigating the binary and politics of borders, the physical definition, transience or temporality of these spaces in relation to contemporary ideas of hybridity and in-betweeness.