pigdogandmonkeyfestos | Issue 2 | The Artists Part 4

Part 4 of our look at the PIGDOGANDMONKEYFESTOS artists...

Anna Francis, How To Make A Manifesto Works Instructions

ANNA FRANCIS  is an artist whose practice examines private histories, public space and civic languages; using forms of intervention, mapping, performance, consultation and photography to investigate the impact of art and culture on the development of cities.  She has exhibited widely across the UK and beyond and has project managed and designed various art platforms which provide opportunities for other artists to investigate the city as a site for exploration and development. These have included Interrogation: Walsall in 2009 (during a one month residency at The New Art Gallery Walsall) and Interrogation: West Bromwich in 2010.

Other projects see her becoming invented characters in order to test the boundaries of the city and its situations. Within this I have variously become a dating agency director, a tour guide, a market researcher and an agony aunt to investigate the city.

Emma Hart, Untitled

Emma Hart  believes there is a gap between how things are experienced and how they might look
filmed. The overwhelming real we stumble through is split from the way visual culture references it, then smoothes it all over. Life looks good in images, or if not good, far away enough for us to manage and control. The lens gives us reality in bitesize chunks which we calmly get down. Hart works with video in an attempt to change the way we consume imagery. Sculpture often provides a way to physically corrupt and 'dirty' images and forcefully squeeze more life out of them.

Hart lives and works in London and has presented solo exhibitions and performances in galleries in the UK and internationally. In 2012 she was shortlisted for the Jerwood / Film and Video Umbrella Awards. Hart was awarded a Random Acts commission for The Jarman Awards 2013, to be broadcast on Channel Four in 2014.

Abigail Lane, Untitled

Abigail Lane - Born in Penzance, Cornwall in 1967, Abigail Lane was brought up in Bristol where she went to college to do an Art foundation course. She moved to London in 1986 to take her BA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths College, where, in her second year, she was prominently involved in the exhibition Freeze, organised by Damien Hirst with his fellow Goldsmiths students, including Michael Landy, Sarah Lucas and Gary Hume. In retrospect, this ambitious three-part show has been seen to mark the beginning of the yBa phenomenon, of which Lane has been a key figure.
Lane and her young artist-friends quickly established a public reputation, many of their early shows being at the Karsten Schubert Gallery, off Tottenham Court Road, including solo exhibitions by Angus Fairhurst, Rachel Whiteread, Anya Gallaccio, Gary Hume and Michael Landy. Schubert offered Lane her first solo show in 1992, and she was subsequently represented by Glenn Scott Wright then later Victoria Miro Gallery. International success followed, and Lane’s work was a notable presence in Brilliant! New art from Londonin Minneapolis in 1995. “Everywhere are scattered visual clues of human activity. They construct a chilling sculptural narrative that balances on the thin line between horror and beauty.” Mark Saunders writing about Skin of the Teeth, ICA, London in 1995.

Her work wasn’t and still isn’t restricted to a particular medium, and could be described as mostly sculptural and installation based. Although, like most artists, there are recurring themes and ideas, these are executed in the medium that suits the subject best, which has resulted in works made in video, sound, wax, print, concrete, crystals, ink, text, found objects … the titles are often an integral part of the work too.

The works have been described as having a dark aspect; less often recognised is the element of humour that lies under the surface in many cases. “I would like to think,” Lane has recently written, “that whilst the works are looking their observer in the eye they also make a wink at the person standing in the second row.”