(i feel like) something's gonna happen and i don't know what it is

Press release

(I feel like) Something’s gonna happen and I don’t know what it is
collaborative project by A Constructed World
paintings, digiprints, video, and events
(opening night performance, sleepover and breakfast in bed)
May 11 2002

A Constructed World Geoff Lowe and Jacqueline Riva began working collaboratively as A Constructed World in 1993 when they founded Artfan magazine. Lowe was trained in painting and art history and Riva in film and photography. Since then they have worked with video, photography, painting, publishing and events. Their projects seek to blur thresholds between sending and receiving and they have facilitated many collaborative workshops including people from varying backgrounds and practices, in New York, London and Melbourne, working with groups such as Wild Kingdom, Art Crew, Rosebud, KinK, Life with Us, Crack of Noon and have worked in collaboration with artist group DAMP. Lowe and Riva’s work has been shown in exhibitions including the first Kwangju Biennale 1995, Sao Paulo Bienal 1998 and Arte allArte in San Gimignano 2000 and will undertake a residency at the Serpentine Gallery in London in the summer of 2002.

Quotes

‘They show how irrelevant are the differences between the person giving and the person receiving the art message, and how collaborative power is important in the dialogue of life and art. When Lowe and Riva exhibit their works, they usually show pleasant environments where the viewer can stretch out on the mattresses, lean on pillows, read some magazines, watch videos and have funÉ.Their video works deal with the unusual and unpredictable, largely with funny situations with plenty of music and laughterÉTheir attitude to culture and art is relaxed yet very serious. Opening up your practice to embrace, as ACW put it, “disowned, discarded and excluded voices” requires courage.’

-Branks Stipancic, independent curator/art-critic, Croazia.. Formerly director of the Soros Center and curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb.

‘ACW is a rejection of a false construction of hierarchies of information, or talent, in the ability to enjoy and participate in the visual arts. It goes beyond Beuys, and beyond Marxist theories of the means of production. More specifically perhaps, it is an understanding that while these hierarchies do exist, and they encourage different readings of the work, there should be no prejudice of one system of knowledge or ability to “read” the work, over anotherÉ rediscover the FUN in contemporary, collaborative, arts practice. You might find that you enjoy the nudity’

-Barbara Hunt, executive director, Artists Space, New York.

‘The story they want to tell us is non linear, non hierarchical, even in the choice of the materials used, from painting to photography to installation to video. In the last case there’s also a fluttering Super 8 look which works against aspects of the omnipotence of the digital. There is a desire not to ‘teach’ anything but rather to find, ideas, cues, and possible points of view in others. And in this case as well, it is the many people involved who make the work, they are the ones who speak, who change roles, or by simply watching the game, change the rules.’

-Roberto Pinto, former editor of Flash Art Italia and co-curator of the Italian pavilion in the Melbourne Biennale 1999 and assabone Milan 2002 and curator of Transforms in Trieste and Short Stories in Milan 2001.

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To interview the artists and for further information about A Constructed World publications contact BASEKAMP 215 592 7288 / or scott@basekamp.com

BASEKAMP is a non-commercial studio and exhibition space, which participates in the creation, facilitation, and promotion of collaborative projects by contemporary artists