A reading of Krzhizhanovsky's short story 'The Runaway Fingers', followed by a discussion with the seven artists involved in the current exhibition. They will talk about their response to Krzhizhanovsky and their contributions to the show. There will also be an opportunity to walk around the show with the artists, and a glass of wine.
'The Runaway Fingers' is a response, executed in a variety of media including paintings, photography, video and interactive installations, to two remarkable short stories by Krzhizhanovsky - “ The Runaway Fingers”(1922) and “Quadraturin”(1926).
Oliver King - Reading 'The Runaway Fingers'.
Executive & Artistic Director of Belka Productions. After graduating from Durham University Oliver trained as an actor at Drama Centre London & The Boris Schukin Theatre School in Moscow. Oliver established Belka Productions with Oleg Mirochnikov & Rosy Benjamin in 2011. Producing credits include Queens of Syria (Young Vic, New London & UK Tour), Three Sisters, Uncle Vanya (Wyndham's), Donkey Heart (Trafalgar Studios) , Luce (Southwark Playhouse), A Dashing Fellow, An Imaginary Circus (New Diorama), Tied to You (Pushkin House), A Warsaw Melody (Arcola Theatre), Sunstroke (Platform Theatre), Piranha Heights (Old Red Lion), Lunch (Vault Festival, Edinburgh & touring), Mary Postgate, Hansel & Gretel (Edinburgh Festival), A Company of Wayward Saints, Another Country, A Picture of Dorian Gray (Assembly Rooms, Durham). Oliver has worked for Lee Menzies Ltd and the Harare International Festival of the Arts (Zimbabwe), and was a sponsorship consultant on From Here to Eternity (Shaftesbury Theatre). Oliver is also the Managing Director of UK based international arts charity, Developing Artists - www.developingartists.org.uk.
The Artists:
Nick Clark is a London-based photographer whose passion is portraiture. He developed his skills through assisting some great photographers including Barry Lategan and David Bailey. He has worked with such international artists as Robbie Williams, Charlotte Church, Sharleen Spiteri, Jeremy Irons and Grayson Perry.
Laura Dekker is a visual artist with a First Class Honours degree in Fine Art from Central St Martin’s, a PhD in 3D Imaging and Machine Vision from UCL. Laura is currently on a MA FA course at Goldsmiths, London. Her work explores “the will to connect”, grasping to make sense of the world, probing at the order of things. She explores these ideas through interactive works, combining robotics, physical materials, layered video, audio and computer vision techniques.
Anya Charikov-Mickleburgh is an artist from Samara, Russia. She graduates next year from the Royal College of Art where she is doing an MA in Painting, following a First Class Honours Degree in Fine Art from Central St Martin’s. Anya is interested in metaphorical language and the relationship between what is revealed and what is hidden. Her practice is engaged in a dialogue throughout the making process investigating the relationship between subject matter, medium and space.
Ana Oak is a London based visual artist from the United States. She has a BA in Fine Arts from Central Saint Martin’s. Un/re/discovering past and present translations, she creates new sets of relationships, easing the transition between them, disrupting the strata of existing power-structure that predetermines our knowledge. By combining old and new media processes and materials she creates an alternative knowledge and history, examining aspects left behind, picking up the pieces, stitching together, collecting information, uncovering marks, trying to make sense from nonsense.
Ed Saye is London-based painter with MA in Painting from the Slade School of Art, London. Each of Ed’s painting is a different version of a fading idyll, a lament for the utopian ideals of Modernism. Highly complex and detailed paintings merge found images of resort architecture, abandoned theme parks and hotel lobbies with natural elements such as dense forests, expanses of water and alpine vistas to create an enigmatic blend of personal and collective memories.
Liz Sergeant is a Central Saint Martin’s graduate in Fine Art, whose practice explores the artist’s role as a catalyst for change, through interventions, installations and playful disruptions. Liz works across a variety of media, including performance, to engage with contemporary social issues. Her work is often collaborative and discursive; it is text-based and inspired by her love of languages.
Dina Varpahovsky, born in Saint-Petersburg, graduated from the MAFA course at City & Guilds London this year. Dina’s challenging, tragicomic work is informed by her own childhood spent in 1970s Russia, combined with current media and Facebook representations of childhood. Varpahovsky’s paintings deliberately problematise the images that we circulate on social media, often serving to project idealised versions of ourselves. She reveals the dominating, predatory side of children, inviting us to reflect upon the different world of adults and children and where the boundaries of influence lie