Art Program
Presenting our newest Resident Artist and revolving art program: Susan Supercharged’s Cabinet of Wonderous Things
Susan Supercharged, is the Curator of the exhibit “SuperNature/City” inside “ Susan Supercharged’s Cabinet of Wonderous Things”, a collaboration inside the Stratford Hotel. Having a background as a Hackney Wick artist for many years and arts community activist, she has her own multimedia practise as well, as well as being a former curator and educator from the Victorian and Albert Museum, the Hackney Wicked Festival, and guest lecturers at Goldsmiths, London College of Communication, and London College of Fashion.
ADORNMENT AND MYTHS
17 July – 14 September 2022
“What do we choose to embellish ourselves, and how does this adorn our lives? What myths do these enhancements create, and what stories of beauty, loss, status, and individuality?
Each of these artworks I see as talismans that reflect our willingness to express our physical stories and investigate our personal proxemics…
Guidance of power, proof and ornament of the hand and soul” – Susan Supercharged
Having been a model and artist, Susan Supercharged’s hand altered prints often suggest her own mixed emotions about costuming the body and the power attached to this legacy.
This exhibition features :
Ritta Hakkarainen
Rosalie Oakman
Susan Supercharged
Liberty Rowley
Maria Alvarez Echenique
Ritta Hakkarainen
Riitta Hakkarainen is a multi-disciplinary artist and designer with a background in scenography and art direction in cinema based in London. Her work uses the medium of theatricality to create environments that explore aspects of the human condition. The aesthetic is used as a tool to shape a microcosm that suggests new interpretations and stories. She finished an MA in Scenography at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design and her graduation project, visual version of N.Gogol’s “The Overcoat”, was commissioned to tour High Fest (Armenia) and Sibiu International Theatre Festival (Romania).
She regularly manufactures Stephen Jones’ fashion pieces for clients like Dior and MET in New York. Lately, Riitta has been working with researchers from UCL, University of Cambridge and Birmingham, making animations and illustrations. This year Riitta and her collaborated at the ‘Creative Europe project’ On-The-Fly residency at Creative Coding Utrecht. Riitta has exhibited internationally including Miniscule Venice, during the 2019 Biennale and has her sculpture in Palazzo Visocchi (Atina, Italy) on a display.
Maria Alvarez Echenique
Maria Alvarez Echenique is an artist working with ceramics. Her recent sculptural work explores familiar cultural artifacts, often mixing contrasting cultural and historical influences, references and attributes such as heritage, identity and, in some cases, gender.
This plays with the perceptions of the viewers by presenting artworks with unexpected and unusual combinations, where fiction and historicity collide, resulting in a cultural time warp where objects and craftsmanship of the past may meet contemporary and futuristic elements, representing and exploring our links to the past, the present and the future.
The figurative elements in my work, especially the head and sometimes, its window on the world, the face, resonate in my work as places where our identity, thoughts and actions are housed.
Liberty Rowley
Liberty Rowley studied sculpture at Camberwell College of Art, but has been making short films and photographs about walking and place for the last 15 years. Over lockdown she focused on making collages, buying a copy of Vogue on the first day of lockdown thinking it would keep her occupied for what was presumed a couple of weeks of not going out. 3 years later, she has bought a couple of other magazines, and is still making collages.
Liberty is a co-curator of Video Strolls, a group that organises screenings of artists films and journeying and place. She also set up The London Arts Board, a gallery that exists on a disused municipal notice board on a piece of waste ground Peckham Road dedicated to giving emerging artists the chance to have a solo exhibition in London.
Geraldine Swayne
“I am mostly a figurative painter. My work addresses unease in the human condition. The subjects I use are not deliberately sensationalist, but my work has a filmic atmosphere and dreamlike quality, with slightly disturbing undertones.” – Geraldine Swayne
Geraldine works from photographs and collages, choosing subjects drawn both from her circle of friends and anonymous sources. The bodies and faces of her subjects always possess an interior psychological narrative, which she tries to amplify with painterly effects that speak to the nervous system rather than to intellect. Her subjects are restrained and still, rather than dramatically active, but they resonate with an atmosphere that reflects insinuated, unspoken, unspeakable and often funny evidence. Geraldine is the Winner of 2020 Moth Art Prize, and Winner of 2018 Royal Academy Summer Show Dupree Prize for female artists.