ADDICTION

Micawber St, London
21 June - 27 July 2003

Curatorial Project with Chris Kul-Want

PRESS RELEASE
adddiction
15 MICAWBER ST
LONDON
N1 7TB
21st June -27th July 2003

Addiction, supposedly more prevalent than ever, can migrate into any activity exceeding the laws that govern enjoyment. Not only defined by drug or substance abuse, everything is potentially classifiable as addictive: sex, work, eating and weight control, play, shopping, exercise, relationships, the TV or its latest incarnation, the internet. This endemic aspect to the recent spate of addictive disorders is revealing both about the irreducibility and persistence of pleasure, and the restraint of law. The works in this exhibition are all about pleasure, yet not as we know it. Instead they are characterised by a sense of disengagement, paralysis or dumbness, interspersed with ecstatic or confused outbursts. Restraint and control, manifested in self-sufficient systems or closed circuits is, itself, the pleasure. The works seem to utilise language in a way that comes before speech, yet they also take the form of a hidden or coded message, a surplus, operating somewhere between a private activity and a public declaration. This ambiguity of address is framed by the location of the exhibition -a vacant office space in central London.

The purpose of this exhibition is to suspend judgment about addiction as culturally problematic; so as to explore the idea of art, and the making and practice of art, as a necessary disorder.

Selected works by artists Alan Ball, Cerith Wyn Evans, Margarita Gluzberg, Mathew Hale, Thomas Locher, Robert Mabb, Susan Morris, Anna Mossman and Julian Opie.

Adddiction: list of works

Anna Mossman
Creating Adult in Natural Landscape -Negative Text, (American Psycho, no. 3)
C-print on Aluminium
2002
Edition of 3

Julian Opie
Cityscape?  1998-9
One of series of six screenprints
Paper and image 61 x 145cm
Edition of 40

Thomas Locher
Everybody/ Nobody
1989
Silkscreen on Laminate and wood
2 x 107cm x 108cm

Susan Morris
Horizontal Year Planner: Incidence of X 1993-2002 (Hypochondria)
2003
10 layers of duraclear in aluminium frame with perspex support
63 x 85cm

Alan Ball
Day… paintings
2001
Correction Fluid on Newsprint on Canvas
Each 25.5 x 25.5cm

Mathew Hale
26 tears (VOWS TO BE TAKEN IN UNISON)
2003
A1 Poster
Available as an edition of 100 screenprints

Robert Mabb
Spiro Pattern no. 4
1-15/02/96
Biro pens on Paper

Mararita Gluzberg
Wig
1998
Pencil on paper
150 x 250 cm

Cerith Wyn-Evans
Future Anterior
Orchid, phosphorous solution.
1994