Aspirational Living Projects present: The Fool
Curated by Rose Walsh, featuring The Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination, Brendan Curtis, Jake Kent, The Punk Scholars Network, Brian Griffiths, Matt Welch
Why did the KLF bury their Brit award at Stonehenge? What happened to The Wallyʼs? And how much is the bounty on Tony Blairs head?
THE FOOL explores civil disobedience through counter-cultural creative responses to Capitalisms endless rampage for resources and people. The fool is cast as an archetypal figure through documentation of unmonumental or famous events from history, places of contention and subversive actions for the future. To show the fool in a variety of manifestations; as an authentic and galvanizing figure for change throughout history, in extremes a martyr and ultimately, a loser. Explored through personal experience the show pays homage to sparks created by individuals acting beyond commodification.
Somewhere between contemporary art exhibition and war museum, it includes archivists, artists, activists and clowns exploring an interconnected constellation through a personal curatorial lens. Demonstrating the breath of expression for activism and idiocy; the internet, graffiti, bootlegging, sculpture and performance.
Rose Walsh
Visual artist based in Bristol making work about, for and with people. Encompassing a wide variety of media work emerges as a non-linear process, filtering socio-political culture and personal experience. Un-monumental gestures pay homage to events, groups or individuals.
rosewalsh.net
Brendan Curtis
Artist, chef, facilitator and performer based in Liverpool who co-runs Couples Therapy, an international workshop and performance collective, in dialogue with Joy Mariama Smith & Manu Cascales. They make work based around intimacy and consent in performance.
couplestherapy2014.tumblr.
Jake Kent
An artist living and working in Nottingham and currently a part of The School of the Damned. He co-directed Triple O.G. from 2013 – 2015 and is currently working on a nomadic curatorial project under the name of Aspirational Living. The Fool, curated by Rose Walsh is the first of these projects. Kent uses cynicism, apathy and emotion as a catalyst to explore the contemporary fascination with the reuse and regurgitation of culture, and the role of those who may exploit it for capital. Through questioning the authenticity and effect of subcultures (such as punk, squatting, skateboarding and other collective actions within art and music) the work becomes a critique and reaction to contemporary culture, politics and personal experience.
jakekent.co.uk
Matt Welch
An artist based London who is currently studying at the School of the Damned. Welch produces sculpture, video and image based works that are concerned with how we make and recognise cultural objects and images. His work is framed within the visual languages of domestic space but shift through material modification and revision. Using these environments as territories, clad with cultural-historical signifiers both recognisable and niche, his work is increasingly interested in the production of artworks as consequential to the construction of a personal identity.
mattwelch.co.uk
Brian Griffiths
Brian Griffiths is an artist based in London. He produces three-dimensional collages using a range of sources, re-thinking the traditional genre of sculpture with the use of the ready made or fabricated found object. He has shown work at the British Art Show in 2011 and the Tate in 2009. Brian Griffiths is currently a lecturer at the Royal Academy.
http://vilmagold.com/
Alastair Gordon
Senior Lecturer in Media and Communications at Leicester De Montfort University. His current research is based around genre authenticity and hierarchy across international networks of DiY punk with specific focus on Japan and Europe. He co-founded the Punk Scholars Network with Mike Dines in 2012 and records and plays internationally with his two bands, Geriatric Unit and Endless Grinning Skulls. He is currently writing on spectral transmissions and future use of the signs of punk past.
The Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination
The Lab of Insurrectionary Imagination are international artists who escape the prisons of the art world, who stop playing the corporate fool and apply their creativity directly to social movements. Infamous for mass disobedience on bicycles during the Copenhagen climate Summit, touring the UK recruiting a rebel clown army for the G8 and running courses in post-capitalist culture.
labofii.net
