12 Oct 2016

Passen-gers – site specific exhibition series, The Brunswick Centre, London

Passen-gers – a site-specific project based at the Brunswick Centre – is pleased to announce its inaugural exhibition 'Our Apocalypse' by artist and musician Mark Siebert.

Siebert's work is characterised by a focus on conceptions of art, value, consumerism, authenticity and the material world. Working in series, each body of work uses a different set of rules to guide the selection of imagery, materials, medium and scale.

Images for Siebert's work come from his daily roaming of the internet, products, shops or the streets, while the medium is selected based on its impact and efficiency to deliver an idea or image. Scale is related to the point the artist is making and the source material. In some cases the works are 1:1 with drawings made the size of computer screens or bus shelters, while others are scaled up to heighten their impact, importance or banality as with his oversized SMS paintings.

'Our Apocalypse' is a series of drawings, watercolours and recordings in which Siebert employs the imagery and language of SimCity to explore the fear of extinction simulated/stimulated by society via politics, culture and the media. Each work is a still life drawing of a computer or phone screen grab featuring a disaster/apocalypse afflicting a UK city, paired with a companion song. Ranging from the realistic to the fantastic (earthquakes to Godzilla attacks), the simulation game is paralleled with the mind's ability to imagine its own destruction.

The scale is enlarged with each work, entering it into artistic medium and reflecting on the gravity or fantastic nature of the imagery. The choice of media offers contemplative reflection on the source material, with almost devotional representation.

An artist talk and acoustic performance written in parallel to the works in the exhibition was held with special guest Chris Fite-Wassilak.A recording will be made available soon.

Passen-gers launched as part of the Art Licks Weekend 2016

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Mark Siebert is an artist and musician who works with drawing, painting and performance. He is based in London and has shown across the UK, Asia and Australia with recent exhibitions including the John Moores Painting Prize (2014), Video Platform at the Singapore Art Fair (2015) and held solo exhibitions at Greenaway Art Gallery (2014), ASC Bond House Gallery (2014) and on the streets of Homerton, London. Residencies include the Florence Trust in London (2014) and the Beijing Studio Centre (2012). www.marksiebert.org

Passen-gers is a site-specific exhibition series that explores the historical, social and material context of the Brunswick Centre. Artists present work sequentially to explore the real and imaginative associations of the site. The title references the 1975 film The Passenger by Michelangelo Antonioni that uses the Brunswick Centre as a powerful and otherworldly mise-en-scène. The plot follows a journalist who assumes the identity of a dead businessman while working on a documentary in Chad, unaware that he is impersonating an arms dealer with connections to the rebels in the current civil war. This notion of a 'passenger' as someone who inhabits transient identities and spaces, relates to how each artist is rendered a passenger within the larger exhibition structure – a structure that is generative and multi-directional, allowing different ideas, themes and narratives to emerge, overlap and intersect, creating dialogue over time. Future artists include Paula Smolarska, Evy Jokhova and Julie Hill. www.passen-gers.co.uk

The Brunswick Centre is a grade II listed residential and shopping centre designed by Patrick Hodgkinson in the mid-1960s. It's often misinterpreted as Brutalist and likened to a bunker or space-ship from a sci-fi movie set – in contrast to the architect's vision: '…it was to be a village, not a megastructure, and never 'Brutalist', but would rather create a poetic construct of feel and not look…'. In 2006 the Brunswick reopened after extensive renovation works. A spruced-up shopping courtyard now occupies the ground floor while the first floor location of this project continues to bear something of its former 'state of decayed majesty and poetic ruination.'

The exhibitions are hosted and supported by Gauld Architecture to encourage wider discussions about the built environment. www.gauldarchitecture.com