on my island none of this would be true

Featuring works by Naama Arad, Guy Ben-Ner, Verity Birt in collaboration with Holly Graham and Richard-Forbes Hamilton, Edgar–Walker, Gery Georgieva, Joan Jonas, Terence McCormack, Hannah Regel, and Mike Seaborne
Guest curated by Chris Rawcliffe

  
Exhibition runs 2 Feb – 17 Mar 2018
Part of our 2018 programme Islands

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arebyte is pleased to present on my island none of this would be true. The exhibition brings together the work of 10 artists from London, Israel and the USA whose practices span sculpture, installation, photography, poetry, video and performance.

on my island none of this would be true explores the various interpretations and contradictions that islands summon in our minds. Islands are the place of freedom and adventure sold to us on billboards at Heathrow Airport but also the morning-after of the UK’s Brexit wet dream. Islands are where identities and cultures meet to do commerce and forge empires, yet they are also the forgotten lands where reptiles are left in a permanent Paleolithic state.

The show takes its title from the last line of a poem called Security, written by Tom Chivers for his book Dark Islands (Test Centre, 2015). Throughout this collection of poems Chivers takes us on a voyage through a mythical urban landscape where he explores the image of the island both literally and metaphorically, as the poems address utopian and dystopian ideas, themes of isolation and escape, and a concern with the natural and urban environment.

For some like JG Ballard’s Robert Maitland, “I am the island” is the cry of a man who is struggling for control over his mind, body and environment. For others like John Donne, who famously wrote, “no man is an island” as he was facing his own demise, all humans are interconnected. on my island none of this would be true observes how artists interpret and reclaim these different narratives to reshape and make sense of the world.

Chris Rawcliffe is founder of artist project space Pro Numb in Hackney, and was Relationship Manager for Visual Arts at Arts Council England. He is Artistic Director of creative producers Forma.

Naama Arad is an Israeli sculptor and installation artist born in 1985. She lives and works in Tel Aviv. Arad has had solo exhibitions both at Tel Aviv Museum of Art as well as Sommer Contemporary Art gallery in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Guy Ben-Ner currently lives and works in Tel Aviv and Berlin. He obtained a MFA from Columbia University, New York (2003) and a BA in Education from Hamidrasha School of Art (1997). In 2005 Ben-Ner represented Israel at the Venice Biennale with his video installation Treehouse Kit. Recent group exhibition include UNLIMITED, Art Basel, Basel (2019); on my island none of this would be true, arebyte, London (2018); Extra Bodies – The Use of the ‹Other Body› in Contemporary Art, Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich (2017); Besser scheitern/ Fail Better, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg (2013). In 2008 he was awarded the Sanberg Prize by the Israel Museum. Ben-Ner

Verity Birt is currently a practice based PhD student at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art and Northumbria University in Newcastle. Her research is currently titled: Re-enchanting the Future; a Feminist Sympoiesis and asks; how do we collectively tell stories that generate meaningful ecological relationships and kinships in a world consumed by ongoing environmental destruction.

Edgar–Walker is a contemporary art collaborative between James Edgar and Sam Walker.

Gery Georgieva studied at the Royal Academy Schools, London. Her work encompasses performance, multimedia installations and occasional musical collaborations (under the stage name Vera Modena). Georgieva has made work from a position of being empowered by her Bulgarian extraction.

Joan Jonas is an American visual artist and a pioneer of video and performance art, who is one of the most important female artists to emerge in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Jonas' projects and experiments provided the foundation on which much video performance art would be based.

Terence McCormack is an artist based in London.

Hannah Regel is an artist based in London.

Mike Seaborne is a photographer based in London.