Common Third / 13 September - 26 October 2018

Pio Abad, Larry Achiampong, Simeon Barclay, Shiraz Bayjoo, Ting-Tong Chang, Holly Graham, Jasleen Kaur, Hardeep Pandhal, Hetain Patel, Alice Rekab, susan pui san lok, Erika Tan, Kentaro Yamada

Installation view, left to right: Shiraz Bayjoo, Ting-Tong Chang, Kentaro Yamada, Hardeep Pandhal, Susan put san lok, Jasleen Kaur, Alice Rekab, Simeon Barclay, Pio Abad

Simeon Barclay, Untitled (Cheese anti hero opportunists), 18 x 14 x 2 cm, Oil on canvas

Hardeep Pandhal, Bhagat Singh Draught Excluder by Mum

Larry Achiampong, Integer 3, C-Type Print

Pio Abad, Decoys, Seashells, dummy CCTV camera, adhesive, Dimensions variable

Holly Graham, Gardening, folded digital print on shiramine paper, 145.5 x 100.5 cm

Installation view, left to right: Hetain Patel, Jasleen Kaur, Larry Achiampong

Kentaro Yamada, Subject Object K, Ceramic vase, Arduino, scent diffuser

Copperfield, London is pleased to present Common Third, an exhibition that explores and considers the points of connection that exist between people who by birth have found themselves connected to or trapped between more than one culture.  Encompassing a great range of social backgrounds and ethnicities, that this shared experience connects so many people is perhaps significant as an area of common ground in a time when division is being emphasised by politicians and media.


To ensure a range of perspectives we have invited curators, writers, artists and collectors connected with this field to feed into artist research and text. We would like to thank David A Bailey (photographer, writer, curator, lecturer, co-curator of the Diaspora Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale), Ying Tan (curator at the British Council, previously curator at Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art, Manchester), Osei Bonsu (curator & writer), Huma Kabacki (curator specialising in Turkish modern & contemporary, and Central Asian art), Larry Achiampong (artist), Jasleen Kaur (artist), Annie Jael Kwan (curator, researcher & writer) and Niru Ratnam (curator & writer) and all of the artists who have contributed in various ways to the process of realising this exhibition.


We have learned and gained a great deal in the open process of putting this exhibition together. Beyond references to the concept of Third Culture and Homi K. Bhabha’s ‘Third Space’, the exhibition's title also nods to the pedagogical practice of the same name for its aim to create greater trust and understanding through a shared activity. Specifically, this theory aims to reduce hierarchy in the process of transferring knowledge.

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Opening Wednesday 12 September, 6 - 9pm

runs 13 September - 26 October 2018 at Copperfield, London





-- BROKEN PANEL DISCUSSION --

23 October, 6.30pm doors, 7pm start

For this event we have decided to break with the traditional formalities and hierarchy of an academic panel discussion. We intend to fill the space with as many voices as possible, alongside exhibited artists and those already involved in the exhibition. Everybody is welcome to come to the gallery, sit together and join an open, informal and respectful conversation to exchange thoughts on the topics that this exhibition highlights.

Open on a first come first serve basis on the night.
Please bring a cushion or something comfy as everyone will be seated on the same level, on the floor around the work. Participation is encouraged, but not mandatory. A moderator will ensure one person speaks at a time so that everyone has an opportunity to be heard.

We will end the event with some food to share together.





What follows this introduction, is the result of an online conversation in text that helped shape and unpack the exhibition:

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>> Speaking to people who have talked about being connected with more than one culture by birth or migration the phrases ‘Third Culture’ and ‘Third Space’ have recurred and it has become clear that this ‘Third’ experience might be considered a point (or points) of common ground shared by people from around the world with very different cultural, social and economic backgrounds. Do you think this point of connection could offer a kind of bridge between people who might not otherwise connect or who might otherwise stand divided in our current political climate or is this too utopian or naive? (Copperfield / W Lunn)
 
> ‘Third culture’ is so broad an idea, what does it really mean? Even diaspora experiences are intersected with class, race, gender and so on. What brings people together may be simpler, shared values and experiences. If we can eat together we can find a way to be together. (Annie Jael Kwan)
 
> This might be true but the slightly bizarre thing about the exhibition at this stage is that right now I’d associate third culture kids with the biggest immigrant group in the UK - Polish people. If your premise is about offering some kind of bridge to people who identify that way why are there no East European-British artists in it as East Europeans are now statistically the largest immigrant groups in the UK. (Niru Ratnam)
 
> We did look to artists identifying for example as Italian American and Eastern European British but did not find anyone making work concerning these issues. That is not to say that that none exist as this could never be an exhaustive process. The exhibition is a selection of work that concerns the experiences of those who feel connected to or trapped between more than one culture. If they connected personally but their work was about something unrelated like architecture then naturally we did not include them. (Copperfield / W Lunn)
 
>> We had initially articulated the show in relation to the concept "Third Culture" as the phrase recurred in conversations and seemed to encapsulate some of the ideas we were interested in but we were careful to frame the show in terms of exploring ideas connected with third culture as a concept only -- consciously not using this idea to label artists or people in general. Do you find that reference problematic? (Copperfield / W Lunn)
 
> The ‘third culture’ itself is not homogenous - we may be all ‘in-between’ but we are ‘in-between’ in very different ways. I am also less interested in labels that might seem to denote what artists are doing, than how their specific practices might contest and complicate our understanding of how we are connected. (Annie Jael Kwan)
 
> Just over twenty years ago Stuart Hall argued in his essay “Who Needs Identity?” that we should move towards thinking about identity as a dynamic, shifting process of ongoing identification - something I think that we’re seeing more in contemporary social and political thought. The danger with this type of curatorial construct is going back to a fixed identity (that of Third Culture Kids) - so my first thought is that this might actually be a bit regressive (Niru Ratnam)
 
> The dominant contemporary political and social thought of today in the west (Trump, Brexit and far right rise in general) seem actually to point away from any kind of dynamic identity in favour of very simple and very worrying divisions between people. This is one of the reasons I was interested to find my ‘British born Chinese’ friend referring to finding shared ground with what she referred to as other people of ‘third culture’. 
(Copperfield / W Lunn)
 
>> There are a lot of different definitions of third culture and ways to problematise those definitions. For example, someone made the argument that while I am defined by the NHS as White British I might still connect with third culture since my ancestry cannot be in any way entirely indigenous to this island.  Do you have a position on any of this? 
(Copperfield / W Lunn)
 
>In the current geo-political climate and on-going otherness we are facing in a post-Brexit, “fake” news, Trumpian era in which the world we are living in is failing to cope with globalisation, the definition of White British on its own is problematic for me. Especially considering United Kingdom’s imperialistic history and examining the questions we are constantly asked to what section we belong to according to the Equality and diversity act in job applications, it becomes somewhat confusing to define who we really are based on where we were born. (Huma Kabakcı)
 
>The “third” is an interesting “Other,” whether it refers to culture, space, text, world… Derrida makes reference to a ‘third genus’ when trying to explain that which operates between the logocentric/mythical. This third genus is simplistically defined as that which makes possible the enunciated paradigm, but also operates in an aporectic way so there is an continuous alternation between the logic of exclusion and participation. In this manner, I find it useful to think of the ‘third’ not as something outside, but as something that can even destabilise what is seen as the ‘first,’ ‘indigenous’ or ‘original.’ (Annie Jael Kwan)
 
>> While our conversations have encountered positive accounts as well as negative it is clear that there can be a certain level of discomfort in this ‘third space’, ‘trapped between cultures’, and that this is sometimes acute. This fragment from the poem Diaspora Blues by Ijeoma Umebinyguo seems to sum this up succinctly (Will Lunn):
“so, here you are, too foreign for home, too foreign for here. never enough for both.” — from “Diaspora Blues” by Ijeoma Umebinyuo (2015)
 
> Sometimes there is discomfort, and sometimes there is a kind of playful liberation to be able to code-switch and slip between sites, spaces and other people’s perceptions of me. (Annie Jael Kwan)
 
>> Some artists included in the show feel a stronger connection to the word “space” as opposed to “culture”. In this sense, Homi Bhabha’s concept ofThird Space seems quite relevant in the context of this show. Do you have any comments in response to this quote by Bhabha on ‘Third Space’ (Copperfield / Aina Pomar):
 
“The theoretical recognition of the split-space of enunciation may open the way to conceptualising an international culture, based not on the exoticism of multiculturalism or the diversity of cultures, but on the inscription and articulation of culture's hybridity. It is the inbetween space that carries the burden of the meaning of culture, and by exploring this Third Space, we may elude the politics of polarity and emerge as the others of our selves.” ― Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture
 
> A quote I particularly like from the introduction of The Location of Culture: “A boundary is not that at which something stops but, as the Greeks recognized, the boundary is that from which something begins its presencing. Martin Heidegger, 'Building, dwelling, thinking' I find this idea of “space” as opposed to “culture” useful, because it really plays into the idea of ‘critical distance’. I think these words of ‘third’, ‘other’, ‘in-between’ involves or implies a constant negotiation, an engagement with and in a tension that is already in existence. (Ying Tan)
 
> One book I especially like is Gordon Mathews’s Ghetto at the Center of the World: Chungking Mansions, Hong Kong. Chungking Mansions, a dilapidated seventeen-story commercial structure in the heart of Hong Kong. A melting pot for Pakistani phone stall operators, Chinese guesthouse workers, Nepalese heroin addicts, Indonesian sex workers, and traders and asylum seekers from all over Asia and Africa live and work there. Mathews refers to it as “low-end globalization” —a world away from the gleaming headquarters of multinational corporations, the building’s residents lays bare their intricate connections to the international circulation of goods, money, and ideas. Chungking Mansions is emblematic of the way globalization actually works for most of the world’s people.
(Ting-Tong Chang)