22 Jan 2013

Alexis Milne - Your Eyes are Dead at JOEY RAMONE, Rotterdam

JOEY RAMONE is proud to present British artist Alexis Milne in his first solo show in the Netherlands. The exhibition - official selection of the International Film Festival Rotterdam - will run from 25 January till 2 March 2013. The opening is on Friday the 25th of January and it will include a live act by Alexis Milne and the performance group The Cult of Rammellzee. After the performance a discussion will be lead by artist/writer Cedar Lewisohn, curator of Street Art at TATE Modern and author of Abstract Graffiti.

Your Eyes are Dead is an immersive media performance/installation utilizing sampled and cut up moving image by Alexis Milne, examining the roots of autonomous subcultural uprising and in particular the origins of Hip Hop. The performance begins by focusing on Robert Moses, the architect of the Cross Bronx Expressway, which was in part responsible for isolating areas of the South Bronx (widely acknowledged as one of the centres of Hip Hop's development in New York) and contributed to the policy of neglect that led to the areas subsequent dilapidation. This dilapidation is reconfigured in a video collage sampling video footage from Wolfen, a 1982 cult political horror film that uses the dystopian background of the South Bronx to stage a killing spree by shapeshifting Native American Indians.

Milne will produce a live performance featuring The Cult of Rammellzee (A performance group based on the recently deceased 1980's nasal rapper/graffiti artist/philosopher) engaged in anarchic freestyle rituals immersed in video collage sampled from archive cult film footage such as Wildstyle, Stylewars, and Stations of the Elevated. After the performance a discussion will be lead examining the cleansing modernist ideals in urban planning in New York during the 1960's and 70's and the subsequent violent onslaught of graffiti writing culture and its contemporary incarnations, lead by artist/writer Cedar Lewisohn, curator of Street Art at Tate Modern and author of Abstract Graffiti.

Alexis Milne is a London based artist concerned with issues surrounding contemporary political protest and forms of subcultural uprising and subsequent recuperation. His work traverses video and interventionist performance, utilizing alter egos, the grotesque, and absurdist parody as tools to comment on the erosion of the authentic and in particular, riot as spectacle. After graduating from Goldsmiths University with an MA in Fine Art, Milne won the Startpoint Prize a European wide survey show for recent art graduates and went on to exhibit Dismantle The Order a solo show at GAVU Cheb, Czech Republic. Recent exhibitions include 3rd Moscow International Bienniale for Young Art 2012, Attraction of the Opposites Rotterdam 2011 & 2012, The Future Can Wait London 2012 and Kunsthause Essen I spy with my little eye (2012). Recent screenings include, Selected (selected by Elizabeth Price) at the Whitechapel Gallery London (2012) and Lost and Found (curated by George Barber) at the South London Gallery (2012). He also curated Bunker Mentality (2012) a video montage exhibition in a Second World War bunker in East London.