Monty / 2 February - 2 March 2019

Rob Bailey, Nic Farrell, Rachel Goodyear, Geo Law, Ariel Luke, Ian Pollock, Adam Renshaw, Adrien Tirtiaux

Monty, installation view at Copperfield, London, , 2019, left to right: Rob Bailey, Ian Pollock, Adrien Tirtiaux, Geo Law, Rachel Goodyear

Geo Law, Fly, Gif

Rachel Goodyear, cone, ink, pencil and watercolour on paper, 23 x 31cm

Monty, p's, 21 x 14 x 3.7cm, acrylic and plasticine

Adrien Tirtiaux, Delerium

Copperfield Gallery is pleased to present Monty, a guest project produced by Kwong Lee and curated by Zoe Watson.
 
Monty is an exhibition that explores and caricatures the alter ego of an artist working under the same name. Underwritten by the creative potential of dyslexia, Monty is a conversation piece between different forms of visual language, creators of imagery, and documentation and representation. 
 
Monty is interested in unconventional curatorial roles in contemporary art, often working in collaboration with artists and designers and in the overlap of roles between artist, technician and curator. Monty’s dyslexia contributes to his unique perspective and way of working, and informs his practice, using visual associations that reflect his way of looking at the world. With humour and absurdity at the core of his practice he proposed to attempt a “solo group show”. 
 
Working with a curator, a producer and with funding from Arts Council England he has invited a mixture of 8 artists and illustrators to make new drawings based on their interpretation of his back catalogue of artworks and projects, supplied as a basic photograph or text description. Monty’s relationship to the artists and illustrators vary from friends, friends’ relatives and others he has never met; each of the invitees present a diverse set of practices resulting in the finished artworks which range from pencil drawing to animation and GIFs. These ‘translations’ are then used as source material for Monty to further explore our understanding of representation, personality, character and institutional frameworks with his own subtle additions to the gallery space. 
 
This project has developed from time working in residence on site at Copperfield into a physical exhibition that will continue in an online form, further contesting how artworks are created and disseminated. Artist and illustrators, Tao Lashley-Burnley and Conway & Young will produce new works for the website when it launches.



-- PANEL DISCUSSION --

2 March, 1.30pm doors, 2pm start 

Join us on the last day of MONTY for an in-conversation event that uses the exhibition as a platform to discuss dyslexia, and its impact on creative practitioners in the visual art world. This discussion will be guided by Adam Renshaw, Dr Rebecca Chamberlain and Kwong Lee.
Open on a first come first serve basis on the night.

Adam Renshaw is an artist whose own experiences of dyslexia, combined with his collaborative practice and an interest in unconventional curatorial roles in contemporary art, led to the instigation of the exhibition MONTY.

Dr Rebecca Chamberlain is a Lecturer in Psychology at Goldsmiths, University of London. Rebecca's research focuses on the psychology and neuroscience of the production and perception of visual art. She is particularly interested in the mechanisms by which artists acquire their expertise, and the impact of engagement with the visual arts can have on education and mental health.

Kwong Lee works as a producer for Manchester International Festival, and between 2005 and 2016, he was the Director of Manchester's Castlefield Gallery. Lee has lectured at a number of universities, and has presented at conferences, seminars and symposia. As an artist he has exhibited in the UK, Hong Kong and Japan.



Monty is supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England and by 3Space.
www.artscouncil.org.uk