idEntity a collective exhibition of international artists 16 September – 18 November 2020

idEntity a collective exhibition of international artists 16 September – 18 November 2020 ArtMoorHouse, Moor House building 120 London Wall EC2Y5ET London, UK

presented by ArtMoorHouse in collaboration with arTbridge

Junko O’Neill, Traveller, Oil on canvas , 100 x 150 cm cm

idEntity Defining one’s identity can be challenging, and discovering a sense of self-reflection in our digitalised era can sometimes take a lifetime.

Identity is not confined to tangible characteristics but rather it is the way we perceive and express ourselves. Factors that individuals are born with often play a role in defining one’s identity. Nonetheless, being such a fluid concept, many of our identity’s aspects change in a constant flux throughout our physical and digital life: our experiences and the places where we live largely contribute in shaping and re-shaping how we see ourselves. Our identity, on the other hand, plays a vital role in how we take decisions by influencing all our choices from the way we cover Image: Phillip Reeves, The Fencer, 2010, Oil, Acrylic, Sewing Cotton on Canvas, 150 x 120cm

interact with peers or why we adopt certain fashions, to our attitudes towards ideologies and political beliefs.

Can art allow us to correct assumptions and express our identity?

Many artists use their work as an alchemical process of discovery a way to explore and question ideas about identity. All the works on show take aspects of the contemporary experience and in the process of transforming an idea into a physical object, synthesise the artist response to this encounter with the world.

The visual experience is uniquely capable of engaging the passerby and in conjunction with the architectural space of Moor House Building creating a moment of visual stimulation and a happy distraction from the everyday.

ArtMoorHouse aim is to establish a unique platform for promoting an unsurpassed synergy between creativity and b u s i n e s s . We c rea te c u ra te d v i s u a l ex p e ri e n ce s a n d presentations, working with emerging and internationally acclaimed artists. We strive to engage, inspire and provide a talking point and an ice breaker in the banking and commercial environment.

ARTMOORHOUSE I WWW.ARTMOORHOUSE.COM I INFO@ARTMOORHOUSE.COM I 120 LONDON WALL EC2Y 5ET LONDON UK I +44 75 0 2211914

Image: Ewa Gargulinska, Aphrodite, 2001 , Oil on canvas , 237 x 122 cm

arTbridge AT ArtMoorHouse After our gender, as Human beings, our nationality and all it entails is probably our most entrenched sense of idEntity.

I wanted to show how artists from different nationalities but nonetheless all active in the cosmopolitan London art scene, respond to the theme of this exhibition and express themselves with their chosen media. It is particularly relevant today when borders are being so distinctly and direly defined.

With a network of 1500 international artists, arTbridge facilitates the creation of meaningful art collections that enrich your work or living environment, permanently through acquisitions or temporarily through rental.

ARTBRIDGEI WWW.ARTBRIDGE.BIZ | STEFANIE@ARTBRIDGE.BIZ

+44(0)20 7610 3210 I +44(0)7743 897 221

Peter Lamb

Identity is the way we perceive and express ourselves, influencing the decisions that we make. As an artist, I have identified myself to be a painter although my work can be read as combinations of elements of paint, photography and print media with seemingly no preference on one process over another. These influences expand and contract at interval and play with the possibilities of each, absorbing respective tendencies, traits of one medium are correspondingly outputted within the practices of another. Many aspects of a person’s identity change throughout his or her life and by having a multi disciplinary approach I am exploring the inherent tendencies of painting and a practice caught up in transitive state of being. In other words something that passes from, between and into another - Peter Lamb

Peter Lamb

Last glow Digital art collage on aluminium subf rame 267 x 203 x 4 cm

Peter Lamb

Skirmishing Digital art collage on aluminium subf rame 256 x 200 x 2.5 cm

Ewa Gargulinska

Europa Oil on canvas 237 x 122 cm

Ewa Gargulinska

Art is my identity; conjured f rom mental, physical, conscious and unconscious, sensual and spiritual levels of my life - Ewa Gargulinska

Ewa Gargulinska

Aphrodite Oil on canvas 237 x 122 cm

Phillip Reeves

The Quarrel Oil, Acrylic, Sewing Cotton on Canvas 190 x 140 cm

Phillip Reeves

‘Clothing concerns all of the human person, all of the body, all the relationships of man to the body as well as the relationships of the body to society’ Roland Barthes Regarding identity. I am interested in how clothing can become a costume for a character to be recognised in, and reac ted to according to predetermined behavioural tropes within a scenario. Taking the psychology of fashion as an undercurrent, I like to feature people and objects in works multiple times, seeing them as reoccurring characters on different sets, perhaps akin to a time traveling soap opera.

Phillip Reeves

Within painting, my attention is directed not towards the person wearing the clothes – but with the attitudes and feelings the clothes evoke, opposed to the people themselves. I look at the way clothing and uniforms are outwardly portrayed by the wearer in society, providing identity. I choose garments that concern my own psychological intrigue, contemplating the use of colour, pattern and forms to explore tropes of power/dominance with in the weight of hierarchies in society and division of labour Phillip Reeves

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Phillip Reeves

The Fencer Oil, Acrylic, Sewing Cotton on Canvas 150 x 120 cm

Ali Jabbar

The concept of identity has changed during thirty years of global mobility. The identity was a national, local, turned into belonging to the entire world. For me, identity is my affiliation with the world of art which is unrelated to time, place, history, geography, or nationalism - Ali Jabbar

Ali Jabbar

Past Bright Days Oil on Canvas 120 x 130 cm

Lee Panizza

My life as an acrobat: exercises in time and space Flying Trapeze I, II and III Just as an actor may assume a role, so can an artist conjure with imagination. I see the sky as a metaphor for the mind. I approach abstract painting as a branch o f p h i l o s o p h y : s e e k i n g t o d e fi n e t h e fundamental nature of knowledge, reality and existence. These three mental "skyscapes" are exercises in perception; of fragmented, shifting layers; of sharp definitions and hazy dissolves.

Like swinging on a trapeze, true understanding moves in and out of focus. They are also a celebration of light and energy. Like an acrobat engaged in a delicate dance of balance, they are a celebration of life - Lee Panizza

Lee Panizza

Flying Trapeze I Oil on Canvas 137 x 112 x 2 cm

Lee Panizza

Flying Trapeze II Oil on Canvas 137 x 112 x 2 cm

Lee Panizza

Flying Trapeze III Oil on Canvas 137 x 112 x 2 cm

Bislacchi

The exploration of the confines of the painted canvas support is at the core of his practice. He is interested in the notion of painting going beyond the two dimensional field where the work addresses issues of space, form and colour.

Bislacchi conveys the theme of identity creating paintings made of insertions of wooden supports that work as purely functional structures upon which he applies manipulated canvas.

Bislacchi

By scrunching, stretching, twisting and assembling several pieces of canvas in elaborated forms, the fabric breaks the ties with its function as painting support and allows the work to achieve geometric voluptuousness prescribing a degree of interplay with the viewer.

This operation, open to 3D experimentations, is strongly connected to the idea of Industrialism, using its language as a set for the exploration of construction elements whose intention is to reflect on how manufacture had a considerable environmental impact.

Bislacchi

Ultramarine Wall Acrylic pigment on canvas and aluminium stretcher 60 x 60 x 13 cm

James Hogan

James Hogan's work creates a narrative that describes the development of individual and collective consciousness to represent a new identity. The story is expressed on three levels in abstract and in oil; typically, thick paint, multilayered to trap the light and applied wet on wet using a knife. Level one focuses on the metaphysical and the sociological, man's emergence from the womb titled: Empathy; distantiation Optic; the attempted deconstruction of the God concept Christs.

James Hogan

Also, the power of intellectual constructs such as dialecticism, Dialectics; the atomisation of society; anomie; Crucials, marginality Strangers; the struggle between good and evil Eclipses; man- made evil and natural disaster Bloods.

Level two explores the level of experience that has always fascinated the artist - what lies beneath the surface: Counter cultures; the immense creative energy of sex and sexuality Reds, the escape from Insanity, the mind series Sleeps. Level three depicts a series of human faces hidden in the crowd, mixing abstract and and representational Identity

James Hogan

Crucial VII Oil on canvas 110 x 110 cm

Junko O’Neill

My work is inspired by the Japanese spacial and temporal concept of Ma, which considers negative space as having a form of existence, with space perceived alongside time. It is neither time alone nor space alone. I express this concept both in figurative and abstract work.

Having lived in the UK for over twenty years away from my home country of Japan, my journey as an artist has always been exploring the ways to express where I am from. With my figurative paintings, I often place a figure in the foreground, viewed from the behind. To give the subtle suggestion of passing of time, I paint the air in a way that emphasises the space the figure occupies. The inspiration of my figurative work is often drawn from literacy pieces, especially Japanese novels such as those of Haruki Murakami and Yoko Ogawa.

Junko O’Neill

My abstract work conveys the fundamental concept of Ma by stripping away any excess elements. I experiment with ways to depict space where time flows at a slower pace, detached f rom the rest not by a physical structure but by one’s own perception. I add translucency and depth to the two dimensional surface that I create. Similar to gem stones which encase time within them, I trap space and time, creating a tension that holds an underlying sense of calm. Either through my figurative or abstract pieces of work, what I create on the surface is space with a sense of time passing. I want my work to provide a breathing space for the viewers and let them sense the transient nature space possesses. - Junko O’Neill

Junko O’Neill

Traveller Oil on canvas 100 x 150 cm

Patrick Altes

Mise en Abime Mixed media on canvas 120 x 80 cm

Patrick Altes

As a member of a Diaspora and committed wanderer, Altes intimately knows this delicate and often uneasy balancing act that we experience when living in a culture different from the one we originate and the sense of uneasiness and not anchored that it elicits.

Conversely, it could be that in an age of renewed nationalism, the new man is the one that doesn't fit comfortably in well defined borders and can't be put in a box with a label on, then stacked away in an orderly fashion." Altes’ work relates to the melting pots and breaking points of land, conflict, and diaspora. It explores our shifting and ambivalent attitudes about belonging, dispossession and migration.

Patrick Altes

When institutional and cultural systems used to d e fi n e n a t i o n a l i t y a r e o f t e n i l l o g i c a l , contradictory and excluding, how do we reclaim place as part of a personal heritage, which has no real validity in the present? Altes offers a viewpoint, which challenges conventional perceptions and bridges differences between people and communities. His work endeavours to transcend the concept of cultural alterity in a world increasingly experiencing petty nationalism and xenophobia. His work and the dialogue it generates, is acutely relevant in its exploration of the “human condition�

- Patrick Altes

Patrick Altes

Forbidden Dream Mixed media on canvas 91 x 73 cm

Barry Andrews

To identify, or have a shared identity with another person, state or universe offers comfort to most humans in that they do not perceive themselves to be threatened and may live in harmony.

We may succumb to peer pressure, we mimic others and adopt other language and habit to gain acceptance, to build trust and to be identified as part of that group. So it is with the world in which we live, as the world becomes ever more precious to us all, as we are able to measure the deterioration of our planet, identity leads to unity which becomes integral to our survival.

Barry Andrews

Beyond our earthly civilisation lies the universe and we must consider the impact of our activities and our responsibility of preserving the whole.

I have produced a diptych, ‘Structure of time, space and experience’ in response to the threat we are currently inflicting on our universe our planetary system and through identity we have the chance to change. - Barry Andrews

Barry Andrews

Hidden strength in sculptured silence Oil on canvas 200 x 150 cm (each)

Gilles Jaroslav

De Profundis is a cry for love. The cry of the prophet Jeremy to his God, that of Oscar Wilde to his lover from his prison cell, and ultimately a cry for hope during the dark hours of our life.

From the depth of the mirror in which, as children, we discover the reflection of our identity. From the distortions by Andre Kertesz, I wanted to explore the birth of the first halo of life that, from the depth of black, emerges the sensitive matter that is our skin. The organic b a rri e r o f o u r b o d y t h a t l i n ke d to t h e photographic film. One hand springs to caress the other hand, distorted, in the gentle acceptation of possessing several identities in one, the impermanence of our existence.

- Gilles Jaroslav

Gilles Jaroslav

De Profundis B&W digital photography on paper photo Rag de HahnemĂźhle paper, 308 gr.

Edition of 9 70 x 100 cm

Marek Emczek Olszewski

"In my art practice I attempt to challenge our identity as human beings and show our smallness in the face of endlessness of space and time. Figures in my photographs are tiny and lost, surrounded by vastness of nature. From this perspective people lose their power and significance, and become tiny anonymous molecules, fully dependent on the surrounding circumstances. I see this vulnerability as our true identity.� - Marek Emczek Olszewski

Marek Emczek Olszewski

Rising and Clarity Digital photography on acrylic glass Editor of 5 75 x 50 cm (each)

Acknowledgements:

Special thanks to Madeleine Pugh and all Moor House’s building management team who, for the past ten years of collaboration, have been directly involved in the development of ArtMoorHouse thanks to their precious help and great support for our Art Program.

ArtMoorHouse Elisa Martinelli E. info@artmoorhouse.com T. +447502211914