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Queer Self Portraits Now

Event Details

Time: November 24, 2011 at 6:30pm to January 29, 2012 at 6pm
Location: Fred [London]
Street: 45 Vyner Street
City/Town: London
Website or Map: http://www.fred-london.com
Phone: 020 8981 2987
Event Type: exhibition
Organized By: Fred [London]
Latest Activity: Jan 23, 2012

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Event Description

Queer Self Portraits Now. By Jonathan Kemp.

“I am large, I contain multitudes.” - Walt Whitman

We might ask: to what extent does the problematization of the notion of ‘self’ problematize the notion of self-portraiture? How does the plurality of the self, the unfixed performance of a necessarily fragmented subjectivity (in other words, the only kind), affect the ways we represent that ‘self’? How does it unlock, for the artist, something that art knew all along? That there are many voices singing in the cavity of your soul. When the erasure of the face becomes the greatest visibility, the loudest call for individuality, and the disparity between self and environment is at its greatest, here the self-portrait emerges, in all its multiplicity and fractured non-identity, appearing where you least expect it, saying something you might not always want to hear. The complexity of that self requires a complexity of representation, as if the camera were invented to steal the soul all along.

Which self, for example, is represented by a wall of wigs, or a pair of hairy breasts? Or standing decked in faceless black lace in the corner of a sheep pen? Or naked and bashfully laughing? How to calibrate the images so that they cohere without admitting their complexity and diversity is their coherence? That a certain sense of play, a knowledge of the fast conceal and the slow reveal, is precisely where they meet, in a joyful rupture of queer dislocation?

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Comment by Ryan Riddington on January 23, 2012 at 15:13: Last week of this show with a gallery discussion:

Gallery Panel Discussion
Friday 27th January
7 pm
FREE

Places limited. Please RSVP to helen@fred-london.com
We also have limited chairs so bringing a cushion might be a good idea.

Queer Self Portraits Now
Curated by Fred Mann

Artists: Ajamu, Nayland Blake, Chris Bogia, AA Bronson and Ryan Brewer, Harold Offeh, Brian Paumier, Jack Pierson, Ryan Riddington, Athi-Patra Ruga, Richard Sawdon Smith, Del LaGrace Volcano

To coincide with this exhibition, Fred London is delighted to announce a Friday night gallery panel discussion on 27th January. The show raises issues of new portraiture, visual arts, identity and representation. The artists included have also used their own images as a springboard to discuss race, class, sexuality and masculinity.

We have invited a panel of critics, artists, curators and thinkers, to discuss not only the show itself, but the surrounding themes and issues.

Panel to include:

Adrian George (Government Art Collection), Oliver Winchester (Victoria & Albert Museum), David McAlmont (Singer), Paul Burston (Novelist and Critic) Claire Fox (Institute of Ideas, The Moral Maze)

Chaired by Fred Mann