Rose Easton 20 Jan Group Relations User Guide
- June 1, 2024
- Rose Easton
Table of Contents
Rose Easton 20 Jan Group Relations
Product Information
- Specifications
- Product Name: Group Relations
- Artist: Jan Gatewood
- Exhibition Location: London
- Main Theme: Interpersonal dynamics among groups, factions, and institutions
- Accompanied by live events and activations
Product Usage Instructions
- About Group Relations Exhibition
- The Group Relations exhibition by Jan Gatewood explores the outer limitations of morality, focusing on discussions of identity and race.
- The exhibition delves into how we communicate about relationships and is uniquely populated by rabbits.
- Rabbits in Group Relations
- Rabbits, like humans, come in various shapes, sizes, and colors.
- They are known for their efficiency in procreating and can be found across different habitats worldwide. In the context of Group Relations, a gathering of rabbits can be described using terms like colony, fuffle, warren, or nest.
- List of Works
- The exhibition includes a series of live events and activations:
- Artist Talk with Jan Gatewood – Date and time to be announced
- Film Screening: Six Degrees of Separation by Fred Schepisi, 1993 – Friday 26 January, 7pm
FAQs
- Q: Where can I get more information about the exhibition?
- A: For general and sales inquiries, contact info@roseeaston.com
- Q: Who should I reach out to for press inquiries?
- A: For press inquiries, contact fabian@strobellall.com
- Q: What is the address of the exhibition venue?
- A: Rose Easton, 223 Cambridge Heath Road, London E2 0EL
- Q: How can I connect on social media?
- A: Follow @roseeaston223 and visit www.roseeaston.com for more details.
Text by Justin Chance
- Rose Easton presents Group Relations, a solo exhibition by Jan Gatewood, the artist’s first in London.
- Like people, rabbits come in a variety of different shapes, sizes and colours, are very efficient at procreating, and can be found strewn across most corners of the inhabitable world.
- They’re mostly timid when threatened, bad at seeing at night, and from an evolutionary standpoint: incredibly malleable when it comes to adapting to difficult and arduous terrains.
- Charismatic survivors, when depicted across fiction rabbits are crafty, clever, vain and resourceful.
- Evidenced by Bugs Bunny and his more interesting and darker ancestor Br’er Rabbit–a mythic figure across the Southern United States and the Caribbean (by
- West African import, much like the people), rabbits are tricksters and escape artists, magicians and athletes.
- Furthermore (like some groups of people of specific colours, sizes and shapes) rabbits are targets and this has made them agile.
- Equipping them with the capability of getting in and most importantly, out of places and situations.
- Not unlike people of certain colours with origins from certain terrains, rabbits: have been historically designated as easy prey: primary and vital steps in universal food chains, or, on a grander scale, as necessary assets within networks of cultural and economical consumption.
- In other words, rabbits (once again like people) can be weighty, nimble and relatable subjects.
- Taking its title from a branch of English psychoanalytic theory that focuses on interpersonal dynamics among groups, factions and institutions, Group Relations is an exhibition by the Los Angeles based artist, investigating the outer-limitations of morality, specifically its jurisdiction around discussions of identity and race.
- Or rather, how we’re allowed to talk about how we relate.
- Group Relations is also an exhibition almost entirely populated by rabbits.
- Comprised of fourteen drawings (and some pillows) with references as broad and far reaching as: Prince and the Revolution and Poly Systerne, the front woman of English punk band X-Ray Spex (music), the films Coonskin by Ralph Bakshi, Bamboozled by Spike Lee, Gone With The Wind (cinema), Toni Morrison’s Nobel prize winning novel Beloved (literature) and the work and careers of artists such as David Hammons, Kara Walker, Henry Taylor, Robert Colescott, Merlin Carpenter and most notably Andrea Fraser–whose likeness appears in free sculptural works distributed throughout the exhibition.
- Returning to Gatewood’s employment of rabbits, like promotional cardboard cutouts animals (whether as puppets, mascots, folk figures etc) can be incredibly efficient stand-ins, allowing the viewer to embody alternative perspectives through the premised and padded arenas of play and pretend.
- As educational tools animals can inhabit situations that on human scales tempt danger–particularly reputationally.
- And as models, animals offer possibilities to present fun, comical and even harmless opportunities to act in or (especially in the case of Gatewood’s rabbits) act out: desires, compulsions and propositions that would’ve otherwise be considered taboo.
- The rabbits of Gatewood nestle/cower in the bosom of a topless woman (Candidate for the hand of the boss’s daughter, 2023), vandalize surfaces with depictions of intimacy (What’s your stance on interracial relationships?, 2023) and wail (I am a cliché you’ve seen before.
- Thank you Poly Styrene, 2023). Begging us to ask, what are these rabbits (and titles) up to?
- One point of Gatewood’s rabbits may be for us as viewers to hesitate.
- As avatars they suggest possible paths for us to connect and relate to material that, if employed correctly, can delay reflexes and soften assumptions and prejudgements.
- A conceptual concern that can also be seen echoed through the artist’s repeated use of glue. As a material glue is abound with contradictions.
- When it’s applied as an adhesive it’s fluid until its binding and as a resist, it blocks colours out so when removed, colours can exist beside one another undisturbed.
- When employed as a drawing medium in an exhibition examining relations across black identity, glue is a loaded substrate: a vehicle (like many other devices, rhetorical or otherwise) for cohesion and/or tension.
- Speaking of glue and bonding: a gathering of rabbits can be called a colony, fuffle, warren and/or nest and associating humans can be described as families, cliques, pods, communities, teams.
- A grouping or series of related art work is often called a body, and a body, no matter what color, size, shape or origin, is a collaboration of organs, cells, systems working towards similar goals while inhabiting a standalonefinite space.
- The politics, feelings and discussions that take place in any of these forms can all be considered matters of Group Relations.
Jan Gatewood (b. 1994, Colorado, US) lives and works in Los Angeles. Group Relations is his first solo exhibition in the UK. In May 2024, Gatewood will have a solo exhibition at Kiang Malingue, Hong Kong. Previous solo exhibitions include: Discrepancy Essence, Silke Lindner, New York (2023) and Tiptoe Hassle, Smart Objects, Los Angeles (2022). Recent group exhibitions include: Group Shoe Two, Public Access, New York (2022); PEEL, Europa, New York (2022); Best in Show, Jack Hanley Gallery, New York (2021) and Vivid organised by Sonya Sombreuil as part of Made in L.A., Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2020).
List of works
- Jan Gatewood
- Cyclical painting reference to contemplate fanaticism and market trends. (Henry Taylor at Manuela, Los Angeles), 2023 Graphite, colored pencil, glue, salt, fabric dye, bleach, oil pastel and oil stick on paper, framed 68×88×4cm
- Jan Gatewood
- What’s your stance on interracial relationships?, 2023 Graphite, colored pencil, glue, salt, fabric dye, bleach, oil pastel and oil stick on paper, framed 68×88×4cm
- Jan Gatewood Complications of a fragmented self, 2023 Graphite, coloured pencil, glue, salt, fabric dye, matcha, bleach, oil pastel and oil stick on paper, framed 68×88×4cm
- Jan Gatewood
- I am a cliché you’ve seen before. Thank you Poly Styrene, 2023 Graphite, colored pencil, glue, salt, fabric dye, bleach, oil pastel and oil stick on paper 68×88×4cm
- Jan Gatewood
- A literary work holding up human vices and follies to ridicule or scorn, 2023 Graphite, colored pencil, glue, salt, fabric dye, bleach, oil pastel and oil stick on paper 68×88×4cm
- Jan Gatewood
- What do we think about irreverence as a discussion catalyst? Uncle Ruckus, 2023 Graphite, colored pencil, glue, salt, fabric dye, bleach, oil pastel, natural pigment and oil stick on paper 68×88×4cm
- Jan Gatewood
- Candidate for the hand of the boss’s daughter, 2023 Graphite, colored pencil, glue, salt, fabric dye, bleach, oil pastel and oil stick on paper 68×88×4cm
- Jan Gatewood
- Children of the Projects. The sequel (Merlin Carpenter 2002/3), 2023 Graphite, colored pencil, glue, salt, fabric dye, bleach, oil pastel and oil stick on paper 68×88×4cm
- Jan Gatewood
- The observer and partof the observation, 2023 Graphite, colored pencil, glue, salt, fabric dye, oil pastel and oil stick on paper 68×88×4cm
- Jan Gatewood
- How Ya Like Me Now? The sequel, 2023 Graphite, colored pencil, glue, salt, fabric dye, bleach, oil pastel, naturalpigment and oil stick on paper 68×88×4cm
- Jan Gatewood
- Hattie McDaniel’s powerful lucky rabbit’s foot, 2023 Graphite, colored pencil, glue, salt, fabric dye, bleach, oil pastel and oil stick on paper 68×88×4cm
- Jan Gatewood
- Willingness to try, 2023 Graphite, colored pencil, glue, salt, fabric dye, bleach, oil pastel and oil stick on paper 68×88×4cm
- Jan Gatewood
- We have ethics because we are different, 2023 Graphite, colored pencil, glue, salt, fabric dye, bleach, oil pastel and oil stick on paper 68×88×4cm
- Jan Gatewood
- This meeting is being recorded. Colescott meets Beat Happening, 2023 Graphite, colored pencil, glue, salt, fabric dye,oil pastel and oil stick on paper 68×88×4cm
- Private View,
- Friday 19 January, 6–8pm
- Open,
- Wednesday–Saturday, 12–6pm
The exhibition is accompanied by a series of live events and activations.
Artist Talk
- Jan Gatewood in conversation
- Date and time to be announced
Film Screening
-
Six Degrees of Separation
-
Fred Schepisi, 1993
-
Friday 26 January, 7pm
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For general and sales enquiries, info@roseeaston.com.
-
For press enquiries, fabian@strobellall.com.
-
Rose Easton
-
223 Cambridge Heath Road
-
London E2 0EL
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+44 (0)20 4529 6393
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@roseeaston223
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Design by Christopher Lawson Ltd
References
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