|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Ladyshave - Artist Information (EN) |
 2010
ARCHIVE
2009
2008
2007
2006
2005
2004
2003
2002
2001
2000
1999
1998
1997
|
|||
Associated projects: Ladyshave
Madeleine Berkhemer is a Rotterdam artist who has shown extensively in the Netherlands, Switzerland and Scandanavia. She works in a broad range of tropes and media, including sculpture, installation, performance, photography and collage. Female identity and female sexuality – often her own- is at the centre of most of Madeleine’s work, whether represented very graphically through performative self-portraiture that is incorporated into the work or through the meanings of the materials she uses; lingerie, fetishised shoes and products that speak of a woman’s body. She often manages to achieve an aggressive and confrontative quality in the work, a quality that remains even in works where she has removed herself or overt graphic imagery altogether; rage, desire and sexual frenzy expertly conveyed through form, tension, material and colour. Martin C. de Waal is an Amsterdam-based artist whose work crosses disciplines, working in design, fashion and the visual art world. Digitally altered photography and performance are often Martin’s mode of working though Martin’s own body often forms part of the work being apparently altered through plastic surgery or make-up to construct its discourse. His work frequently engages in the notion of “identity” and its relationship to the way in which mass and fashion media use “identity” as a commodity. Sexuality, gender and race –and more often the complex intersections between all of these things- feature strongly in his work. His work has a wry quality often expressing the desire for the unattainable glamour and perfection promoted by media images whilst simultaneously poking a self-effacing finger at himself; someone who should know better. Whilst the modes of his subject matter –the mainstream fashion media- have often been the means by which he has made work, more recent performances have taken this discourse even further: literally “using” or placing himself within the musical performances of Belgian Electro stars (and Karl Lagerfeld cover duo) Vive La Fete or swapping songs with each other. Recent performances in this trope have included the performance at Cokkie Snoei as part of the “New Gothic” project and work at FOAM as part of the Guy Bourdin retrospective. DJ Chantelle is a Rotterdam-based conceptual artist whose avatar practice is as much part of the work with the “visual arts boy band”, the collective, The Artoonists (De Artoonisten) as part of a body of individual work that pokes an irreverent, dadaistic swipe at contemporary Dutch society and, in particular, the relationship between gender, sexuality, power and consumption. “Objects of Desire” remains a preoccupation for DJ Chantelle, the bizarre avatar with the body of a suited man and the made-up head of an archetypal bourgeois woman who produces work that reflect deep seated desires to consume luxury and exclusivity as the ultimate fashionable social power accessories. Subversively political, the works, however, defy simplistic readings as a mere critique on consumerism. What makes DJ Chantelle unique within the contemporary conceptual field is the concentration on very traditional production methods: ceramics, glass and granite works are often allowed an existence of their own, sometimes combined with photography, performance or works on paper drawing on one of DJC’s former existences as a political cartoonist. In addition to showing works with The Artoonists, DJ Chantelle was also one of these artists commissioned by the city of Rotterdam to creat the Martin Toonder Monument, a monument to the Netherlands’ best loved cartoonist. This seminal work –executed in pure 19th century materials such granite, bronze, gold leaf- is one of the key pieces of post-20th century public commissioning by a Dutch city, approached entirely without concern for the modernist orthodoxy. The large body of work that forms the modular installation “Self Serving Salome” takes as its starting point DJC’s preoccupation with French decadent texts such as “Against Nature” and “decadent” aesthetics, in particular the works of Aubrey Beardsley, an unusual starting point for a Dutch artist. The work involved a number of large-scale ceramic pieces handmade by the artist using traditional techniques. These are then placed in site-specific relation to other photographic, video and sculptural elements, depending on the unpredictable mood of the weird diva. Jennifer Tee is one of the Netherlands’ pre-eminent younger artists. Her work that has been shown internationally and drawn acclaim and awards –such as the Prix de Rome- is most usually associated with reflecting her cultural experience as Chinese-Dutch, drawing on both western practices and clearly Chinese iconography which perhaps also reflects her dialogue with the rich body of work emerging within contemporary Chinese art. Another artist whose work is constantly refreshed by experimentation with different craft techniques, she has worked in a broad range of media, perhaps the most common form being installations that involve the use of strong colour often through use of fabric, iconography drawing on traditional Chinese elements and forms such as embroidery or ceramics. Whilst the issue of cultural identity is usually fore grounded in Jennifer’s work, the issue of gender and identity remains evident in almost all work; sometimes obscure, personal and hard to read or at other times –such as in some of the video work- almost universal in it tragicomic ability to engage the most cynical viewer. Risk Hazekamp is an artist from The Hague whose photographic works take the issue of gender by the horns, quite literally in some cases since the images of “the West”, cowboys and all the baggage that they carry in terms of gender and media constructions of gender, are prevalent. In works that use the figure, disturbingly familiar clothing and landscape to deconstruct –or perhaps reconstruct- the idealised images of maleness and femaleness, Risk’s work often exists in a state of ambivalent “femanliness”. Is she seeking to attain the perfect image of a lesbian Malboro woman with tinges of a female James Dean? Or is she asking us to think about how Hollywood manipulates us? And does the bullfigher imagery challenge the sexist swagger of Hemingway or reflect a blatant admiration? Sometimes it is difficult to tell and perhaps one does not need to since therein lies the power of the work to arrest. Risk’s work has been showing in numerous European countries, the USA and Japan, but is little known in the UK. Liz Chute (The Cookery Club) The Rotterdam artist Liz Chute’s work addresses gender in a lateral yet clear way. Her work usually uses a mode of address in which the common and stereotypical ways in which women experience visual culture, design and even science is central. A sly take on the way in which women’s magazines and media address/manipulate women through traditional roles and activities, her work or specific bodies of work usually incorporates an element of “women’s” mass culture. For example, in a performance/installation event called “Elixir” presented during the Rotterdamse Festivals, Chute designed and packaged a “life elixir” which was then presented, complete with sweeping promises, to the public from a specifically constructed mobile stand. A direct reference to the visual culture of commercial cosmetic promotions, the piece subverted the phenomenon, raising questions about its relationship with women. She is perhaps best-known however for the body of work presented as The Cookery Club (a long-term collaborative project with Sander Dikstra) in which the name itself alludes ironically to the diminishing of a mass female contribution to popular visual culture. This is also present in the modus of the work. Combining photography, performance and installation practice, the common feature of this work is the use of materials generally used for cake decoration, pastries and sweet making. Using materials like spun sugar to create structures that are often large and sprawling, most frequently referring to human anatomical parts and medical science, this work immediately raises questions about women’s roles, the gender codified body and their respective relationships to activities such as art, design and science. In a site-specific work for Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, for example, large human organs made from sugar were presented within an installation, sprawling from and around medical equipment. On another level, Chute’s work can be taken as a comment on the gender politics arising from Dutch traditional beliefs about relationships between art and science. The much-studied tradition of Dutch anatomical painting and its relationship to science is both long established and deeply “male” in its gaze. Chute’s work can be read as a questioning of such culturally engrained narratives in which men are allocated all the achievements; cookery is, after all, a form of domestic chemistry. Siliva Russel lives and works between New York and her native Netherlands. She works primarily with drawing. Her works have been traditionally produced through a structured process: she makes at least one drawing each day and then uses her prolific output to produce filtered showings of the work. These works which, until quite recently, have been fairly small, often produced in rapid to response to the events of her day, are sometimes shown individually and sometimes shown as an installation directly onto the wall of the gallery, a greater whole being built up of the individual drawings. Female figures and representations of women –perhaps autobiographical- are a strong feature of the works. The drawings are seldom uniform, often varying in method, materials or colour, but taken as a body of work they seem to share certain characteristics. Their use of colour and content feels instinctive rather than designed; they feel self-reflective whether the content is transparent or not. The suggestion of teenage doodles on pages of perfumed journals and fragmented displays on a million bedroom walls becomes all the more apparent when they are shown in the grouped installations. They ask us to consider the process by which young women reflect on their own identity, in formation, through images produced by their own hands. More recent works have seen a move to the opposite end of the spectrum; large-scale drawings in which the sombre heaviness of black lines defining heavy female figures stands alone or in juxtaposition to garish colour. |
