• Mimosa Echard

    Pulsion Potion
    21.09.2017 — 05.11.2017
    Private View 21st September 6-9pm
    Open 12-6pm Thursday-Sunday
     
    Cell Project Space presents the first UK solo exhibition by French artist Mimosa Echard.
     
    Echard appropriates dead and living matter, playing on both an illusion of living and the skillful dosage of poisons and their antidotes. The exhibition comprises of film and sculpture drawn from the artist hoarding and foraging from both nature and industrialised debris to articulate Echard’s desire to make sense of the world. Her underlying botanical knowledge drives the act of collecting and composing, not solely linked to an inquiry into material but also to a possibility of being infected by it.
     
    Algae, lichen, kombucha, phallus indusiatus mushroom, ginseng, clitoria, verbena, summer savoury, St John’s wort, chamomile, brambles, achillea, helichrysum, heather, egg shells, flies, dried bees and butterflies, Diet Coke, marbles, wrapping, false nails, car body debris, Leeloo Gé contraceptive pills, Echinacea pills, brewer’s yeast, dietary supplements for skin, fertility, hair removal wax, lactation or tranquillity pills from Boots and Schaebens. Ingredients all selected for their paradoxical side effects, which are impossible to control, but simultaneously provoke ecstasy, anxiety, annoyance, feverishness, seduction, irritation, rejection, and desire. 
     
    Central to the exhibition is Echard’s recently produced film ‘The People’, with accompanying soundtrack by musician Raphaël Henard. The densely chromatic work is compiled from the artist’s vast family archive of Mini DV footage. Travelling through a twilit forest wilderness in the Cévennes mountains, the film arrives at a small isolated clearing depicting an alternative communitarian way of life, cut off from society, constructed autonomously around nature rather than displacing it. ‘The People’ are a close network of friends and family members who have become polarized from contemporary life to create their own social reality and alternative living arrangement.
     
    Autobiographical and a gesture of resistance by the artist, Echard poses an anxious counterpoint to an intermediary stage between her personal experience of the natural world and technology.
     
    Recent group exhibitions in 2017 include ‘Le Reve des Formes’, Palais de Tokyo, Paris; ‘Pre- capital’, curated by Nicholas Bourriaud, La Panacée, Montpellier; ‘Independence Day 2’, Sommer Gallery, Tel Aviv and 'The Plates of the Present, So Far’, Gallerie Praz-Delavallade, Paris. In 2016 Echard exhibited in ‘Faisons de l’inconnu un allié’, Lafayette Anticipation, Paris, following her residency at Fondation d’Entreprise des Galeries Lafayette (2015) and ‘Destroy the image and you will break the enemy’, Project room, Galerie Chez Valentin, Paris, in 2014. Her most recent solo exhibition ‘iDeath’, was presented by Galerie Samy Abraham, Paris in 2016. Echard lives and works in Paris.
     
     
    Generously supported by Fluxus Fund
     
     Fluxus
     

  • aster, bedstraw, colt's-foot

    with Sean Roy Parker

    31.08.2017
    Cell Project Space is working with Sean Roy Parker to lead ‘aster, bedstraw colt’s-foot’, an off-site workshop studying local wild flora and attitudes towards littering in public greenspace.
     
    Parker will be collaborating with members from Headway East London, a charity supporting people affected by brain injury. Participants will observe, identify and gather common wildflower specimens, whilst discussing access to the footways and litterpicking en-route. The workshop will conclude with bouquet-making and flatbed scans of their findings, inspired by Parker’s ongoing series ‘Roadside Montage Homescreens’. The active citizenship encouraged in ‘aster, bedstraw, colt’s-foot’ offers a creative solution to navigating our often-neglected and overpopulated greenspaces. 
     
    Sean Roy Parker (b. 1988, Kent) is an artist based in London and St-Leonards-On-Sea. He work featured in group exhibitions include ‘D-A-N-G-L-E’, Bargain Studios, St-Leonards-on-Sea (2016); ‘Systems for Sharing’, Deptford X, London (2015); ‘POLYMYTH X Miss Information’, Auto Italia, London (2015) and ‘Pleasure, Balance, Devotion’, Eastside Projects, Birmingham (2015). Parker is an associate of School of the Damned alternative MA, and recently programmed Common Room, a week-long free school at Guest Projects E8. He is the founder PEFA Projects (@pefa_projects), under which he co-ordinates creative workshops across London and the South-East. 
     
    Co-ordinated by Rachael Davies. 
    For further details contact: rachael@cellprojects.org
     
    This project was devised for PEFA (Preserve Environment For All), a community engagement initiative by Sean Roy Parker, and is generously supported by Hackney Council's Community Chest Fund and Finnis Scott Foundation.