Following on from the success of Chris Evans' we will destroy you - an interactive Space Invader piece that broadcast the images of it's players onto the bar wall - we are pleased to highlight our new programme of Art in the Bar.

Incorporating the work of artists at various stages in their careers, from as far apart as Cardiff and Berlin, London and New York, the programme will be shown seven days a week with each artist exhibiting for a total of seven days.

• Mon 15 - Sun 21 April _Llun 15 - Sul 21 Ebrill

Veronique Chance (London) and Zatorski & Zatorski (London)

Zatorski & Zatorski

On first inspection, Witness appears to be documentation of a performance: the stage is a busy London street; an imposing suited man walks on, carrying a briefcase, feeling his way with a white stick. He reaches centre stage and stops, placing his briefcase at his feet, from which he extracts a religious magazine to hold in an outstretched hand.

The character is in fact real: Ted is an ex-tax inspector who went blind and found God. With impeccable regularity he silently offers his faith to passers-by outside the Social Security office in Islington.

Zatorski & Zatorski observed his performance every week for eight months and the subsequent film lasts one hour - the same amount of time that he stands there every week.

 
Angela Darby 
Air Signs presents a group of Northern Irish adolescents and school children drawing logos in the air with their index finger. Their choice of brands ­such as Nike, McDonalds, Barbie and Adidas ­ suggests that commercial marketing is so all-pervasive that merchandising images are already part of the young persons visual vocabulary.

The way in which image and symbol can have a profound influence on how we view others and ourselves is particularly relevant in Northern Irish culture.
There, cultural identity is reinforced through the branding and packaging of political and religious aspirations in symbols and icons. Consumerism may appear to cut across political and religious aspirations by providing a shared identity. However, consumerism itself relies on our insecurities of identity and self-image for its success.

• Mon 22 - Sun 28 April_Llun 22 - Sul 28 Ebrill

Colin Heggie (Edinburgh) and Aura Satz (London)

I put a spell on you by Aura Satz
I put a spell on you is part of an ongoing performance and video project entitled the Conjuror's Assistant, exploring the role of the female assistant as the instrumental body upon which magic is enacted. This
metamorphic body is entranced, levitated, boxed in, cut-up, put together again, puppeteered or ventriloquised, whilst somehow retaining invincibility.

This work reverses the stereotypical suspension trick where he stands and she lies: a magician is suspended horizontally whilst his female assistant is vertically upright.  As he moves his hands in sensuous theatrical gestures over her abdomen, luring her forwards (as opposed to upwards), she slowly drifts, advancing towards his abdomen.  His gestures are distorted to appear almost liquefying, sexualising the grid their intersected bodies create.
Gradually her stomach swells and appears almost impregnated by the caress of his magical fingers.

Sweat by Colin Heggie
sweat is post-pub contemporary culinary culture.
the circle of weekend life.
the mirror ball has evolved into a tower of meat.
sculpturally sound, architecturally unstable.
sparkling light reflected as the temperature increases and releases sweat upon sweat of grease. lightening the load on realisation that all things must pass out.

in sweat this slice of savoury eye candy continually dances in the heat leading the viewer into temptation.
untouchable, untasteable

• Mon 29 Apr - Sun 5 May_Llun 29 Ebr - Sul 5 Mai

Veronique Chance (London) and Marek Brandt (Berlin)

Exercise
Veronique Chance (London)

Exercise is part of an ongoing investigation into self and identity, and references the uses of the portrait in fine art and photographic history, making connections with the still and moving image, and time. The representation and re-presentation of the human subject means that the act of contemplation and the viewer¹s gaze become important elements in the structure and presentation of the work.

Exercise has been developed from a series of physical exercises performed by the artist, from instructions taken from a Marines exercise manual. Looking at the performance element of each individual exercise ­ and in their relation to each other ­ the work examines ideas of repetition, sequence, rigour, instruction and obedience. Perceptions are altered dramatically with the use of speed and/or repetition, and the same sequence or movement becomes something quite different: without instruction and a sense of place, the body becomes something both controlled and uncontrollable, or out of control.

Looking at parts of the body in isolation further reinforces these ideas, giving a sense of disembodiment and of the uncanny. The use of text alone, as a form of instruction, invites or demands that the viewer performs.

Untitled (Berlin 1999)
Marek Brandt (Berlin)
Untitled (Berlin 1999) was made in Germany ten years after the Berlin wall came down. The specific location, where the subjects walk, used to be part of the former Todesstreifen (Death Stripe), a narrow piece of land between East and West Berlin. For forty years this area was only accessible to armed border patrols, who would shoot anybody trying to pass, now people walk there everyday. But where are they going' What are they thinking' Have their lives changed in other ways?

The sound in the film is minimal in structure: floating wavering tones, somehow indifferent, unfocused, but suggestive of a wide open area. The sound builds up from time to time into over-modulation and feedback - including police radio samples - just to fall back again into indifferent noise.

For more information contact Hannah Firth on 029 2031 1050 or email gallery@chapter.org