First Bowie, Now This!
‘First Bowie, Now This!’ brings together Artists, Performers, Designers, Comedians and Academics to form an exhibition acting as a socio-political diagnosis of 2016, a year of schismatic divides and fractures within the fabric of the Western ‘civilised’ ideal.
The exhibition launches with a series of performances by artists Ollie Doe, Jayne Dent, Rosa Rodgers Postlethwaite and John Whale from 7.30pm on Saturday 11 November.
In 2016 either side of the Atlantic, differences inherent to social and political structures intensified, whilst the spectre of extremist violence became a reality on European soil. Perhaps more than at any point in modern history, there was a profound feeling that some system or philosophy of human progress and co-existence had reached its end.
Also, David Bowie died. Somehow, Bowie became a kind of watershed-figure, a yardstick-tragedy for a year in which the fundamental doctrines of cosmopolitanism and idealised globalism within our unilateral Western world came under intense and violent scrutiny. Did public grief over a string of celebrity deaths in fact expose a latent realisation that Global Capitalism had reached an intractable point in its evolution?
The exhibition includes work by AAZZBB, Bielecki&Bielecka, James Bridle, Deividas Buivydas, Josh Cadman, Jon Cornbill, David Foggo, Aaron Guy, John Harrison, Adam Heardman, Nick Jeyarajah, Toby Lloyd, Andrew Maughan, We Are our Media, MothPhlegm, Joe Preston, Josh Raz, Robert Stuart, Jade Sweeting and John Whale.
‘First Bowie, Now This!’ is curated by Jon Cornbill and Adam Heardman and supported by Berwick Visual Arts.