Andro Semeiko & Shino Yanai “Comedy and Menace – The Birthday Party” at White Conduit Projects, London

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Shino Yanai, “Screen Memories”, detail, single channel video installation (HD, color, sound) [11’50”] 2012. Courtesy the artist & White Conduit Projects, London

Andro Semeiko & Shino Yanai
Comedy and Menace – The Birthday Party

16 November – 28 December 2014
at White Conduit Projects, London

White Conduit Projects opens its central London location at 1 White Conduit Street N1 on 15th November 2014. It will be showcasing Japanese artists and designers alongside British and international artists in a programme of innovative exhibitions across a variety of media.

The inaugural exhibition entitled Comedy and Menace – The Birthday Party is an ambitious project showing works by two artists, Andro Semeiko from Georgia and Shino Yanai from Japan.

Semeiko has exhibited in various group and solo shows in England. This time he will produce work based on the history of the neighbourhood of the gallery, referring to knightly quests and cycling in Islington. Semeiko’s projects often feature knights. – “These clanking, forlorn knights, in their tragicomic search to find something authentic in this synthetic universe. Never perceiving that their mistake is to look for authenticity elsewhere, when it can already be found in their own purposeful, yet hopelessly misdirected quest.” (JJ Charlesworth)

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Andro Semeiko, Power of the Tres, 2013, acrylic and oil on board, 23x15cm. Courtesy the artist

Yanai uses a large screen projection to show her photographic series, Screen Memories. She also shows Ghost Self, a group of black & white photographs. This is her first exhibition in the UK. Yanai produces self-portraits in landscapes that relate to the memory of historical events. She wishes to express the difference between Japan and its regional characteristics; a universal tragedy of the modern state and ancient beauty.

The similarities between the two artists is that both their works stir up overwhelming satire based on their own histories. They investigate how society has been constructed and examine how we perceive the world by dislocating objects and collaging them within their work. Often they combine both the idea of humour and elements of threat within the same picture plane. The main purpose being to describe a dual nature of reality where both modes can co-exist, perhaps simultaneously. They each have their own history back home in Georgia and Japan. Semeiko’s work relates to the post-Soviet era and Yanai’s to Japanese post-traditional culture.

“The past is what you remember, imagine you remember, convince yourself you remember, or pretend you remember.” – Harold Pinter

White Conduit Projects
1 White Conduit Street
London N1 9EL UK
info@whiteconduitprojects.uk
whiteconduitprojects.uk

Opening hours
Wed/Thur: 11h – 19h
Fri/Sat: 12h – 20h30 (Late night viewing)
Sun: 11h – 17h

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Comic and Menace – The Birthday Party, Installation view. Courtesy the artists & White Conduit Projects, London

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Andro Semeiko, installation view. Courtesy the artist & White Conduit Projects, London

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Andro Semeiko, The Islington Cyclist, 2014, acrylic on board, 25x20cm. Courtesy the artist

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Installation view. (Andro Semeiko, Wheel Drawing, 2014. Acrylic on wall and floor / Shino Yanai, Screen Memories, 2012. Type C print) Courtesy the artists & White Conduit Projects, London

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Shino Yanai, detail from a series “Ghost Self”, 2014. Type C Print. Courtesy the artist & White Conduit Gallery, London

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Shino Yanai, “Screen Memories”, detail, single channel video installation (HD, color, sound) [11’50”] 2012. Courtesy the artist & White Conduit Gallery, London

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