MARK TITCHNER
Exhibition runs until 4 May | Wed - Sun 11am - 5pm
Grumbling Fur Performance | Dilston Grove | Sun 27th April, 3pm
A 30th anniversary exhibition in Cafe Gallery and Dilston Grove.
Mark Titchner Cafe Gallery 2014, photo Miyako Narita
In celebration of the 30th anniversary of the opening of Cafe Gallery and the 15th anniversary of the opening Dilston Grove, CGP London has commissioned a single artist to present works across it’s two spaces.
The exhibition encompasses a number of media including digital print, wall drawing, video, sculpture and installation exploring systems of belief, both secular and spiritual, often focusing on the marginalised, discredited or forgotten ideologies and objects we place our faith in.
Using the impersonal language of the public realm, ranging from the quasi-mysticism of corporate mission statements to the maxims of revolutionary socialism, his work exhorts us to believe in it. Motifs taken from advertising, religious iconography, club flyers, trade union banners, prog rock and political propaganda all vie for our attention.
The common denominator is a quest for enlightenment; a desire for some form of transcendence; and yet, abstracted from its original context the message appears drained of meaning. We know that we are being asked to respond but the purpose is unclear, leaving us only with the formal means of exhortation and our own desire for meaning.
Titchner has specifically conceived a new series of wall drawings for Cafe Gallery. Early on in his career wall drawing was a central focus. Originally based on Op Art wallpaper designs from the artist’s childhood home, the works moved through an exploration of diagrammatic and modernist design motifs to the artist’s first works with text. In 2001, Titchner abandoned these works to concentrate on the new possibilities offered by large-scale digital print. However, a new wall drawing commissioned for the reopening of the South London Gallery in 2010 led Titchner to reappraise this element of his practise and it has since continued to be a significant aspect of his work.
Mark Titchner 'ROSE' Dilston Grove 2014, photo Miyako Narita
The exhibition continues across the park at Dilston Grove with ‘ROSE’, a hallucinatory new collaboration with acclaimed musicians Daniel O'Sullivan and Alexander Tucker and a distinct contrast to the hard edge, silent but vocal graphic works at Cafe Gallery. As you approach the enchanting hum beckons you inside it as if the building itself has come to life. Once you enter you are surrounded by sound, moving image and Dilston Grove itself all working together to impress something upon you, something uplifting, something disconcerting?
YOU LIVE
YOU LEAD
YOU CREATE
YOU CHANGE
YOU WORK
YOU DREAM
There is no question that this work was specially developed for this unique space. The work combines large format text with fast cut images relating to the four elements; water, fire, air and earth. Moving through three increasingly unsettling hypnotic sections, affirmative texts of the kind encountered in self-improvement manuals and corporate speak, creep gradually towards something more sinister. This seemingly affirmative, commonly used language contrasting the imaginary landscape of individual aspiration with our real conditions of flawed existence.
The work was influenced by interrogation techniques found in the declassified CIA Kubark manual.
The soundtrack for the work is an original piece written and performed by Daniel O'Sullivan and Alexander Tucker, which will be performed by them live on Sunday 27th April 3 - 4pm.
Cafe Gallery Southwark Park during the 1980’s, CGP London Archives
CGP London 1984 - 2014 - A different kind of gallery celebrates 30 years
2014 sees the 30th anniversary of CGP London, a public art gallery that began in a derelict cafe and now boasts unique exhibition space across two sites in one of London’s most beautiful parks, a model record of community engagement, and a hugely popular exhibition programme. Unlike other public art galleries, CGP London has been managed and run since its inception by artists.
Cafe Gallery Southwark Park during the 1980’s, CGP London Archives
The early 1980s saw a thriving artistic community in Bermondsey, which had lost its docks and other big employers and still bore traces of wartime bombing. Artists took advantage of low rents in this depressed area with studio space and accommodation for many provided in places like Butlers Wharf and St Katherine’s Dock. The Bermondsey Artists’ Group was founded in 1983 to advocate for artists and to find exhibition venues of which were rare outside central London. Within a year, the group had secured use of the old cafe by the lido in Southwark Park, and voluntarily refurbished and opened it as an exhibition space. Since then, CGP London has consistently been ambitious and taken risks in regeneration and programming.
Cafe Gallery Southwark Park 2013, CGP London Archives
Three decades on, and CGP London’s success can be measured in the transformation it has worked on itself and its surroundings. Before the old park cafe was quietly rebuilt as a modern gallery in 2001, CGP opened the derelict church on the edge of Southwark Park as a temporary exhibition space. This proved so successful that they took it on raising the capital funding to renovate it for long term use as a gallery. Dilston Grove became their second exhibition space and now CGP is the only London gallery with two completely contrasting sites for presenting work: a cool white cube and a cavernous, raw installation space. Reflecting both this uniquely individual visual arts environment, and its artist-led management, CGP’s programme is known for taking risks and allowing artists a creative freedom unknown elsewhere. When CGP opened, an art gallery outside of central London was a rare phenomenon. Bermondsey is now a key centre of this city’s arts ecosystem.
CGP London is a unique visual arts venue that not only proves the positive power of such places, but also the singular difference artist managers can make.
For exhibition programme and opening hours visit www.cgplondon.org
Dilston Grove 2014, photo Miyako Narita
CGP LONDON
Centre of Southwark Park
London
SE16 2UA
www.cgplondon.org
www.re-title.com/exhibitions/CGPLONDON.asp
www.re-title.com/exhibitions/DILSTONGROVE.asp
