Cynefin
July 12th – August 9th. 2024
Open Thurs - Sat 4pm-8pm or by appointment.
Curated by Neal Rock
Artists:
Gordon Cheung, Michael Freeman, Maria Georgoula, Virginia Gibson, Giorgos Kontis, Peter Lamb, Helen O’Leary, Eftihis Patsourakis,
Vibha Vijay.
Cynefin is a Welsh word that does not have an exact equivalent in the English language. Often translated as habitat, the word has a deeper, more nuanced meaning that describes a place of existential belonging, a synchronicity between peoples and their relationship to home and cultural history.
This word names an inaugural group exhibition and opening of a new gallery and residency program in Athens, Greece. It marks the expansion of the Freeman Artist Residency program, founded by Welsh visual artist Neal Rock, in Charlottesville, Virginia (2020). Gibson. The artists in this exhibition have led peripatetic lives in their pursuit of cynefin. Having often left their countries and communities of birth, many have created a foundation for a sense of belonging that crosses and renegotiates national, ideological and political boundaries.
Co-sponsored by a Faculty Research Grant for the Arts from the Office of the Provost & the Vice Provost of the Arts
University of Virginia. USA
Rafael Pérez Evans
Artist in Residence & Solo Exhibition
August - October 2024
Rafael Pérez Evans (b. 1983) is a Spanish-Welsh artist, living and working in London. He received an MFA and a BFA from Goldsmiths, University of London. He is currently reading for a PhD in Fine Art at the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford research funded by The Arts and Humanities AHRC Doctoral Training Partnership.
Pérez Evans’s installations, sculptures and paintings aim towards gravity and bluntness. His work grafts together tactics of queer and agricultural dissent. Pérez Evans repurposes tired readymades from agricultural and industrial origins, foodstuffs and untamed gestures taken from protests to unite these material and political histories. Drawing attention to the relationship between queer and agricultural surplus, he creates works both vengeful and fragile, which complicate our understanding of a collapsing material and social world. The materials he works with are often unstable, mirroring the degraded lands, voices and bodies that have been turned to surplus.
His work has been exhibited internationally with solo exhibitions including Dust Bathers at Queer Circle, UK (2023); Insulin at No Show Space, UK (2022); Handful at The Henry Moore Institute, UK (2021); Pavo Realengo at Nogueras Blanchard Gallery, Barcelona (2017); and Pararrayo at Abierto Theredoom Gallery, Madrid (2017). Two-person and group exhibitions include Lull at Workplace, London, Unpacking, Wheels at The Royal Academy, South London Gallery and Leeds Art Gallery, UK (2019-2022); Pica at TEA Museum, Spain (2022); Thief, Invigilate at C3A Museum, Spain (2020); Salvation at Saatchi Gallery (2020); The Devil’s Bird – Ornithomancy at Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei (2019); L’Dounne – Divination at Matadero, Madrid (2018); and Queima at Despina, Rio de Janeiro (2015).
