#thomas yeomans

[galeriemanque]

Opening Friday, Oct. 26: Total Power Exchange

Opening reception:  Oct. 26, 7-9 p.m.  Exhibition continues through Nov. 18.

Thomas Yeomans     Nailing the Colours

Video with sound   3 mins. 52 secs.

[galeriemanque]

Total Power Exchange

October 26 – November 18

Galerie Manqué presents Total Power Exchange, featuring work by Luke Barber-Smith, Bob Bicknell-Knight, Claire Jervert, George Metesky, Lane Twitchell and Thomas Yeomans.  The show’s title, Total Power Exchange, is a tongue-in-cheek reference to an extreme form of BDSM, used here as a metaphor for the largely involuntary ceding of ever more power and control on the part of the individual to larger forces, whether corporate or state. 

Lane Twitchell’s Drip Dropped evokes the immense power and influence of the oil industry.  The hand-cut Olefin-on-panel piece contains numerous visual motifs derived from a typical gas station (including literally overarching gas-pump nozzles) that have been exploded and reassembled in an almost kaleidoscopic manner.  The final effect is that of a stained-glass window from the Church of Big Oil.   

Bob Bicknell-Knight’s Unattended Bag takes the form of a custom-made handbag featuring slogans from a recent Facebook advertising campaign launched in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The unattended bag, referencing the continued threat represented by unattended luggage in public and private spaces, contains a shredded copy of the New York Times accompanied by a 3D print of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s head. The attached USB contains all of Bicknell-Knight’s Facebook data since joining the social media platform over 10 years ago. 

In Claire Jervert’s almost miniature-scale drawings of drones, the unmanned aircraft appear on sheets of paper that are otherwise blank. The placement of the image transforms the void of the paper into a vast expanse of sky, through which the drone approaches.  Additionally, all of Jervert’s drones are military in origin, and so are presumably not entering our space with the purpose of delivering a package from Amazon. 

The painting by George Metesky, Aerial 2, is an overhead view of an actual maximum-security penitentiary complex in the U.S.  The structure is rendered in a visual idiom of bright colors and simplified, toy-like forms that are reminiscent of vintage or low-end video games.  This entertainment-culture lens is used to view a deeper and darker layer within the same society, one in which a larger percent of that country’s population is incarcerated than any other. 

Thomas Yeomans’ video, Nailing the Colours, combines several elements—passionate text, stirring music, emotive visuals—that are commonly found in various forms of propaganda.  However, despite the seemingly hortatory and apocalyptic content, any distinct ideological position or goal remains ambiguous. Part of Yeomans’ intent is to leave the viewer uncertain of exactly who is attempting to manipulate them, but with a heightened awareness of the tools that are employed to do so. 

A photograph by Luke Barber-Smith gives a view of the post-bankruptcy Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, NJ.  Following the removal of the immense letters from the top of the building, only faint traces remain of the defunct business’s name. Barber-Smith has digitally desaturated the image and immersed the structure in a kind of thickening fog, producing a distanced-in-time effect that brings to mind Shelley’s Ozymandias.  

The exhibition was organized by gallery curator George Metesky.

[galeriemanque]

Opening Friday, October 26, 7-9 PM.

[teacream]

My good friend Thomas is releasing a few new tracks on Spotify soon and you should take a listen to his discography because it's so good. This is one (of many) of my personal favourites.

Thomas Frederick

Thomas Frederick, Category: Artist, Albums: Archive, Singles: Split EP, Top Tracks: Come Back, Hit and Run Loving, Outside, Fathersong, Firs

[etcisabelgravity-blog]

20th November 2014

Thomas Yeomans

video - stop kony 2012

viral video, invisible children, black and white picture, simplification, misleading impressions. 

videos edited from found footage (web) physical and emotional responses from viewers. 

audio samples. understandable and accessible. exaggeration, ambiguous. Post cinematic. 

Film - 'We're both alive!' (14 mins) 

Themes of struggle, identity, beauty, vulnerability, ephipnany, obvious - reflects nostalgia and accomplishment (we're both alive) 

Music - form, expression - emotionally exploiting material. 

Social media - click baits. x factor auditions -emotional response. genuinely happy/sad in a condensed space?

music - minimal rock. foreboding anticipation - threat- build ups. 

EDM/track music. digital maximalism? moving through emotions at an accelerating rate. 

Excerpt from pacific Rim - Guilermo del toro 2013. 

Simple romantic narratives. easily recognised characters and archetypes. 

abstract ideas rather than pictographic - exotic, hollywood bloc busters. attacking senses. 

video 'Escape' (31 mins) 

post cinema, multiple genres, platforms, multiple genres. 

Health Goth Aesthetic - sea punk 

Appropriation, cut up, collage, montage authorship questions. re-purposing material - main stream activity. enjoys restrictions, validations, value, co-authorship, what is new and original. 

vine videos - 7 person boat crash - holy grail 

less american (dream) - evolving technology, losing oneself. 

choosing chips? intuition, scrolling, no methodology

doesn't reference/cite others. minimal alterations - changes/ authorship - harder to locate. 

hard to detect an artists sincerity when deconstructing authorship. Thomasyoemans.com 

[swim-sleep]

Thomas Yeomans screening at Forde Space in Geneva on Friday 26th September

[aligunnsketchbook]

Ahmed & Carpenter: Aversion Management - Review

Review in issue 7 of The Skinny 

Loss Aversion theory and target-based pay scales are more akin to a sales environment than a gallery, but for Aversion Management Ahmed & Carpenter have created pressurised working conditions for artist’s Hannah Dargavel-Leafe, Adam Renshaw and Thomas Yeomans.

In Aversion Management the relationship between artist and gallery is analogous with employee and employer with both parties working towards the shared goal of producing content for public viewing.  Employed to create new work, responding to the topic of ‘work’, the artists had to meet targets outlined in their Payment Policies Document in order to earn the maximum fee for the production of the work.

Visitors to the exhibition literally step onto Adam Renshaws piece.  Instructed to create a site-specific piece that would act as legacy for Ahmed & Carpenter’s management of Rouge Project Space, he has used tarmac to mark out the boundary of one corner of the Project Space, creating a physical manifestation of a performative action; interpreting ‘work’ as physical labour.

Thomas Yeoman’s film Eternal September is a projected onto the wall and is a collage of effortlessly edited found footage. The mixture of sports, creative and corporate imagery alights to the 21st Century quest to work harder and achieve more.  Eternal September presents a hyperreality, a lifestyle embedded with stylised objects, social trends and competition between one another.

Taking a more transcendental approach to the exhibition topic, Hannah Dargavel-Leafe has created a large-scale sculpture.  Set the task of creating an architectural structure that will exist in four dimensions, Dargavel-Leafe’s piece is a mass of geometric shapes and transparencies.   A brutal form of converging lines and reflective space, the piece seeks to address the human need to make work become more efficient.

Without being able to read the Payment Policies Document or knowing whether they have met their targets it is hard to assert whether the artist’s have been successful in their contractual obligations.  Performing the role of Exhibition-Manager Ahmed & Carpenter have instigated full control over the artist’s and the exhibition, authoring the whole action as an artwork in itself.   By creating a corporate environment in a space that is normally autonomous, Ahmed & Carpenter are bringing the economic relationship between artist and curator/gallery to the forefront of the discussion.

Ahmed & Carpenter will release a full evaluation of the project and the artist’s contributions to the public during Rogue Open Studio’s.

[flamelikeme]

my outrageously clever friend Tom interviewed by Dazed Digital on his latest art project