Balthazart & Drinks #6 - NOHO Artists - In conversation

In Conversation
A ‘Call and Response’ Group Exhibition by NOHO Artists

The artworks will be on display from 27 May to 30 June 2015.

Founded by Rod McIntosh and Fleur Deakin, NOHO Artists are a collective who met in Spring 2014 and realised there was a synergy between their practices. Central to them coming together amongst the white walled avenues of a fair, was a mutual desire to talk about the ideas behind their work and to share their experience of making art.

At first glance the individual practices of the NOHO Artists may seem disparate but on closer consideration, there is common ground in the artists’ commitment to the formal qualities of their work, a dedication to their use of technique and materials and a desire to offer a generous window on their private motivations through engagement with other artists and the public.

The body of work exhibits their varied visual languages and has been co-curated through a call and response process. The act of passing a piece of ones own art work to another artist from whom you request another art work in reply. This triggers a consequential passage where the receiver offers a piece to the following artist in the chain until a full circle is complete – offer, response, repeat. The accumulated works and interpretive texts act as a narrative to this process as well as offering an insight into the spoken and implicit conversations between the members. The writing accompanying the exchanges are an immediate response to another artist’s work and the artist’s own choice and are a refreshing departure from sterile gallery text.

Through this conversation of art works, many dialects are spoken but there is a common visual language and mutual understanding. The exchanges reveal a dialogue; punctuation, silence created for reflection and consideration, opposition and consensus, quieter and louder voices. The openness of the conversation results in a selection of works for the exhibition that offer a starting point for a deeper inquiry into the NOHO Artists’ shared thinking.

NOHO Artists are: Fleur Deakin, Rod McIntosh, Blandine Bardeau, Hermione Carline, Frikkx, Benjamin Parker, Natalie Ryde.