Curated by Wönzimer, Los Angeles

LOCATION: DG.1 Bussey Building, 133 Rye Lane, Peckham, London, SE15 4ST

10TH JULY - 17TH JULY

Open Wednesday - Sunday, 12 - 6pm, or by appointment

‘ECHOES’ furthers the dialogue between contemporary artists from Los Angeles and London, providing a lens into cross-cultural exchange and artistic collaboration. The exhibition aims to explore the resonances and contrasts between the artistic practices of two vibrant cities, both marked by their own unique socio-political landscapes. The artists have navigated through significant socioeconomic challenges, both in the United States and the United Kingdom. As the world grapples with ongoing political and economic turmoil, art remains a vital means of expression and resilience. This exhibition highlights how periods of hardship can inspire innovative and thought-provoking art.

ARTISTS:

Dale Adcock
Ian Patrick Cato
Lucien Dante Lazar
Vasco Del Ray
Adam Dix
Ian Douglass
Katie Hackett

Lisa Ivory
Holly Keogh
Emma Tod
Cheyann Washington
Ann Weber
Tom Woolner

THE ARTISTS:

  • (b.1980, United Kingdom) lives and works in London. Studied BA (Hons) Fine Art Painting at Wimbledon School of Art (2003). MA in Fine art from Chelsea College of Art & Design (2005). Adcock has exhibited at TJ Bolting, Transition Gallery, Saatchi Gallery, Beers, ID Gallery, Hong Kong, and had a solo exhibition at OHSH Projects in 2022. He was nominated for the John Moores Painting Prize in 2023. Dale’s monumental paintings and hypnagogic drawings draw upon the artists investigations of his own psychology and imagination. A daily practice of drawing allows the artist to access his subconscious to draw out his understanding of life and human history. Influenced by mythology and appearing as ancient relics, Dale’s works seem to defy categorisation or a particular moment in time.

  • (b. 1994, USA) Dante Lazar is an interdisciplinary artist whose praxis is founded in the intersections of art, science, and spirituality. He received his BA from Bard College (2016), his MFA from California College of the Arts (2020), and is currently working on his PhD in the Philosophy, Cosmology and Consciousness program at California Institute of Integral Studies. His dissertation will concern the pedagogy of spiritual development through the diversity of the arts. Art, for Lucien Dante Lazar, is a deeply introspective and spiritual process. As a result, his work is both intimate and universal, both for the individual human being as well as for humanity as a whole. His paintings, music, sculptures, poetry, prose, as well as his interpersonal creative therapies are opportunities for healing and profound, transformative reflection.

  • (b.1967, United Kingdom) Dix lives and works in London. Adam’s paintings are deceptively benign on first glance; the subtle densely layered oil glazes, nostalgic imagery and well-handed colour bring together a world depicting community and ritual, whilst traversing the landscape of analogue and digital medias through a blend of traditional folk customs, religious ceremony and contemporary communication. Adam studied a BA (Hons) in Graphics and Illustration in 1990 at Middlesex and in 2009 an MA in Fine Art at Wimbledon College of Art.

  • (b.1998, UK) Hackett’s practice delves into the intricacies of the natural world, constructing landscapes that uncover secrets in the overgrowth and reveal echoes of distant memories. Her work is translated through a feminine connection to the earth’s atmosphere and mythic history, resulting in poetic scenes sometimes suggesting time stood still. At others, motifs float freely and forms emerge through bold yet gentle brushstrokes. Themes of discovery, wonder, sound, and place serve as a visual excavation, creating new worlds embedded in the lands and environments that shape her. Through painting, Hackett reconstructs these fragments to create intimate and ethereal works that sit on the border of reality.

  • (b. 1991, USA) Keogh’s uses a combination of lucid washes, pressed pigment and realistic renderings the artist addresses themes of femininity, belonging, desire and Jungian psychology. Keough’s practice pulls from their own film photographs, family videos, and popular culture in a way that collapses reality and imbues existing imagery with new meaning.  Keogh is currently undertaking a MFA at Goldsmiths, University of London.

  • Washington is a painter from Los Angeles, California. Represented by Wonzimer Gallery for the last two years, Washington’s personal studies encapsulate the essence of human behavior and the figure as it mirrors nature. This conversation has been developed through numerous techniques and practices including drawing & painting. Her most recent series of natural pigments works on silk and homemade paper also depict the nurturing bond that we all hold or maybe that which is holding us. This process extends her studies into biology and natural medicines such as ethnobotany and personal studies which examine her own body. The evolution of Washington’s work connects us back to the ultimate understanding of this system in which both imbalance and balance live within us.

  • (b.1979, UK) Woolner’s work has taken many forms, from large scale sculptural installations, often built on site for specific locations, to solo and collaborative performances, responding to context, that employ humour and slapstick theatrical devices. More recently, however, he has been making things that come closer to paintings. This new work, made through an intuitive and playful process of pouring, piping and squidging, akin to cookery or amateur cake decorating, allows materials to take control at a molecular level, compressing and comingling into, rather than onto the surface. Made in reverse and partially blind, semi-viscous liquids slowly or rapidly congeal to agree upon a form that sits somewhere between painting, sculpture and fresco.

  • b. 1991, USA) Cato is a Nashville raised, Los Angeles based artist. Cato is fascinated by the blurriness between reality and fiction in our present world. -“All my favorite sci-fi movies are coming true!” Living in the capitol of make believe, he likes painting ‘simulations’ that draw inspiration from the science fiction & fantasy pop culture of his youth, the aesthetics of trucking decals & bumper stickers out on the freeways, and the often overlooked supernatural aspects of nature. He uses Gonzo style sampling to reinterpret these different historical iconographies; casting a wide net of spangled insignia across the dusk of an American cultural landscape. Sometimes like maps, other times more like mirages, Cato’s work offers a quintessential perspective into the hallucinatory matrix of contemporary Southern California culture.

  • Born in Mexico now residing in Los Angeles. Vasco is a first generation immigrant who constantly learns from valuable experiences which he then transforms into artworks. Believing we all have the decision to become of great value to our communities, Vasco shows us through his work and life that limitations don’t define us, rather they are opportunities for expansion and self reflection. Collaborating with brands like Adidas, OSEA, creating The Billboard Music Awards’ first ever NFT or creating massive 30+ feet murals in the heart of Los Angeles, Vasco is reminder that the American Dream is still alive and strong.

  • (b. Chicago, IL. USA) Douglass is an artist and writer based in London. His practice encompasses painting, drawing, writing, performance, installation, and sound. Ian completed dual degrees of History and Industrial Design at Parsons the New School for Design and Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts in New York City. Before relocating to London, he participated in group exhibitions in Los Angeles, California, a residency in a desert oasis outside of Marrakech, Morocco, and collaborative painting-performances and installations in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. He was also the first artist-in-residency at the Wyl Castle and its next door prison in Switzerland, culminating in his first solo show Hallucinations from the Castle's Prison.

  • (b. 1966, UK) Ivory lives and works in London, UK. Ivory graduated from St Martins School of Art with a B.A. (Hons) in Fine Art (Painting) in 1988. Ivory explores the concept of otherness and its inherent duality of fear and attraction. She creates fantastic worlds of mythical creatures, referencing wild men, chimeras, hybrids, anomalies, spectres and other classical narrative archetypes. She has recently shown with Nino Mier at the Brussels Art Fair, Veta, Madrid, Fabian Lang Gallery, Zurich, a solo show with CZA, Milan and a solo show with Pamela Salisbury, New York.

  • Tod’s work explores the remediation of paint in a period of digital image circulation, with its accelerating speeds of transmission and shared attention deficit. Works negotiate this shift through stillness and ambiguity. Peripheral events, fleeting moments, and chance encounters are brought to the centre creating new imaginary territories. Visual fragments taken from the internet, TV, and art history are playfully recombined and erased. Zones of exclusion are brought to the fore, challenging the primacy of centre over periphery. Exclusion matters.

  • (b.1950, USA) Weber makes monumental sculpture out of found cardboard boxes. Her interest is in expanding the possibilities of making beauty from a common and mundane material. Weber’s sculptures have a mystery or double meaning to them. Neither entirely representational nor abstract, but something in between, she wants the viewers to bring their own associations to the artwork.  She received her BA in Art History from Purdue University and an MFA from the California College of Arts and Crafts studying under artist Viola Frey, whose large-scale sculptures greatly influenced Weber’s work. Weber lives and works in San Pedro next to the Port of Los Angeles.