altMFA: Multi-Function
25 July – 23 October 2016
curated by John Ros

      Johanna Bolton
      Gillian Duffy
      Sadie Edginton
      Nathania Hartley
      Samantha J Heriz
      Amy Leung
      Rebecca Olajide
      Louisa Stylianides
      Shinji Toya
      Marion Tu
 
The liberal arts have been under attack for some time. Many cannot see the value of education away from vocations or trades because it is hard to quantify the value of such education. As we constantly look to data for answers, the data-less lose significance. However, freedom of thinking and learning through critical discussion and the uncovering of new methods and modes of operating, so entrenched in the study of the liberal arts, are without a doubt the most valuable tools we have for maintaining a rigorous and curious citizenry.

Education and large institutions must be challenged. Though they often tell us that our next career steps are “this… then that…”, we must not take for granted that they have our best interests at hand. The public push toward corporatization, along with the focus of administrators on the value of fundraising and market-driven decisions over learning, can only serve to further the growth of a homogeneous mass of identical thinkers.

In London, the Anti-University of the late 1960s brought a counterargument. It wanted to break the structures created and pushed by educational institutions. People met within a free and safe space where they could act unencumbered by socially prescribed roles. Though short-lived and well under the radar, the Anti-University helped to spark a movement and platform for those seeking alternative education, self-organization, non-hierarchical structures and radicalism.^[01]

Today, students are mere numbers, assembled into lists to check off. They are payers into a debt system not dissimilar to the housing bubble.^[02] Tuition is way too costly, debts will follow students around for decades, and salaries are unable to pay for the increasing costs of life — let alone to cover any kind of planning for retirement.^[03] How are we going to get out of this?

Protest often feels futile, but when ridiculed by those who claim to love freedom the most — like the recent complainants about Black Lives Matter protesters — its power is obvious. Protest can come in many forms depending on what is being protested — we can take to the streets, but (in education) we can also form a solid front of actions against those conspiring to keep the neoliberal, corporate machine running. Protest manifests itself in the groups we form, our meetings and conversations, the daily actions we take, and the way we spend our money. The alternative education models that we create are a form of protest. altMFA is a form of protest.

Founded in 2010, altMFA is an alternative ‘Master of Fine Art’ course established by artists for artists. It offers a free alternative to a university-based MA in London, and follows a proud tradition of non-hierarchical systems that allow for flexibility and possibility. Better yet, it widens the dialogue around opportunity by creating a counterargument to the status quo. The course has no fixed premises, takes place in a range of private and public venues, and sets up a series of lectures, residencies, exhibitions and events among numerous other programs that nurture the growth and challenge the learning of each student within their individual studio practices.

altMFA: Multi-Function looks at ten altMFA artists. This diverse group of artists has created a rigorous dialogue, both with each other, and, more importantly, with their local community. Moving at a constant pace, their work allows for a healthy mix of learned experiences with lived ones. This aspect runs counter to the push of vocational learning as it provides a step towards real life influences, as opposed to hypothetical ones in a controlled learning environment. As alternative models in education become known, their vitality will be their viability. This movement will be neither proprietary nor standardized. Projects around the world will take different shapes based on the needs of each community. Each group, each locale, each community, will have to come up with its own efforts to build solutions to today’s issues. Liberal arts study, especially in the alternative arena, will allow for creative solutions to our problems that will help shape our future.
 
 

Chance & Possibility

Chance and possibility allow for the impossible. They put our calculations to the test and offer up alternative results. Possibility is not always easy to see in chance; nor does it always make itself clear. It takes confidence in one’s practice to be open to unfamiliar combinations of interactions and to allow them to direct one’s process into new spaces.

In b-e-a-c-h, 2015, Amy Leung worked with fifty stoneware ceramic objects, allowing them to be washed away by the tide. Any that remained or were recovered the following day were shared among fellow altMFA members. The vulnerability of this process reveals layers of possibility and opens up the expectations of dissemination. Processes of Life/Painting, 2016, is a project by Shinji Toya that explores the relationship between life, new technology and painting, using a life­-imitating algorithm called Game of Life. Hundreds of painted images by Toya are cut, pasted and combined. An algorithm provides thousands (or potentially millions) of variations of paintings to be grown in the digital space. Sadie Edginton creates monotypes using a garbage bag as the inked plate. These intimate variations offer a multitude of possibilities and examine beauty in the mundane. Similarly, Gillian Duffy uses simple objects, light and photography to develop landscapes of aura — portraits of the electricity of the air. The prints of bin bags by Edginton and light by Duffy both explore personal interactions and reactions to our surroundings.

Amy Leung

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A series of drawings are available as a further distribution of b-e-a-c-h. Contact amy.b.leung [at] gmail.com for more details of this giveaway.

 
Shinji Toya

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Website with digitalized images generated in a Max/MSP/Jitter program.

Aggregate page for all images exhibited on galleryELL.com during the duration of this exhibition. (Twelve new images will be available on this exhibition page each week.)
 
 
Sadie Edginton

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Gillian Duffy

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View Duffy’s Residency at North & Found.
 
 

Strategy: Methods, Motive, & Movement

One’s strategy in the studio can morph and evolve. Methodologies develop as modes are tested and belief systems form. Motives shape methods that initiate actions and allow for our experience of our surroundings. Each step taken can be seen as a plan of action. Linear progression is not necessary, but constant movement is essential.

The Study of Hairbands has continued to bring Johanna Bolton to new places. Each step is a strategy to uncover the next process. The latest, I Twang, 2016, takes a simple everyday object and makes it a mystical and spiritual one that may be able to forecast the future. Samantha J Heriz’s, Numerical Comparisons, 2016, maps out time in a non-sequential way. Here the strategy is less about the obvious forward step, and more about perpetual movement in space. There is a dichotomous synchrony that works on many levels, instigating memory while focusing on subtle movements. Tapping Into The City, 2015-present, by Nathania Hartley, has a similar non-sequentiality about it. Though the method becomes collaborative, the individual’s movement is equally important. The focus on the city as human drives at its civic quality, while stressing the idea of collective openness.

Johanna Bolton

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The Study of Hairbands

I Twang

 
Samantha J Heriz

 

 
Numerical Comparisons is a composition of two aligned works (Tölurnar, 2015 and Yellow Leaves, 2013), both concerning diversion, subtlety, duration and the overlooked. Each moving frame places the viewer as problem solver, away from the simplicity and aesthetic of the image. Filmed on location in Iceland and Australia, the works show oppositions of landscape and season.
 

Nathania Hartley

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Tapping Into The City, 2015 to present, explores our movements through private-public spaces in the city and the impact of our urban surroundings on us and our relations with each other. Primarily taking the form of group walks, these are open to all and involve moving as one through the city, listening and responding to its sound and the sound of our feet. There is also an online platform where anyone can share research and relevant information on issues surrounding the topic.

 
 

Location as Action

Today’s technological and global marketplace often succeeds in convincing us that location does not matter. This virtual perception of how small our world has become can often lead to a lack of acceptance of our physical locality. However, as citizens, we are members of our local communities first. It is beginning to feel as though thinking locally is becoming a political action. If local activity may be activism, the artist’s studio is the hub of that activism.

Marion Tu’s West Alabama Street, 2016, is a sound walk around her gated community. It moves the listener through intimate and not-so-intimate spaces that seem generic, but also seem to exude a specificity of our own surroundings. Connected to the imagery are all-too-familiar real estate slogans that attempt to sell the buyer a fabricated, pre-packaged lifestyle. Rebecca Olajide’s architectural drawings and sound pieces both deal with simple spaces and the overlaying of space and time — location and duration. Layers build on the individual space and construct the elemental into the complex. Overlaying continues through Louisa Stylianides’ video, Stitched Together, 2015, which intertwines sequences from specific moments to create a broader landscape. Stylianides’ Dear Paintings, 2015, plays with the self and the studio as location, bringing a hidden world of possibility to the viewer.

Marion Tu

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Rebecca Olajide

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Louisa Stylianides
 

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Every action we take, every space we occupy, every dollar or pound we spend, is political. Being an active citizen requires much energy and time. Some spaces in our lives — as student and as artists — offer potential for even more political activism. Awareness is step one. Camaraderie is step two. Action is step three. Come together! Participate! Be the solution!

For more info on altMFA please visit here and here.

Special thanks to all the members of altMFA for their activity and action against the status quo.

Thank you to the dedicated Exhibitions Team at galleryELL.