Tiwani Contemporary is pleased to announce African Industrial Revolution, an exhibition and public programme by e-studio Luanda. e-studio Luanda is an artist collective, project space and studio complex founded in 2012 in the Angolan capital by Francisco Vidal, Rita GT, Antonio Ole and Nelo Texeira. The collective has played an instrumental role in fostering the visual arts scene in Luanda, producing regular exhibitions and running an art education programme.
This will be the studio’s first exhibition in the UK, taking the shape of a 'residency' within Tiwani Contemporary’s space. The programme will include the production of works, performances and a blog by collective members Rita GT and Francisco Vidal. Vidal is part of the official selection for the Angolan Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale, commissioned by Rita GT. The gallery recently announced their representation of Vidal.
Working across on- and offline formats, A.I.R focuses on producing works and ideas that depends upon both the analogue and digital, investigating how information is disseminated today. Imitating the internet’s ability to freely reproduce, distribute, borrow and share ideas, the artists are creating work that sits within the emerging concept of what has come to be defined as post-internet art. Whilst much of the dialogue around the genre has so far taken place in Europe and North America, e-studio’s residency at Tiwani Contemporary will create the opportunity to widen up the geographical perspective to this discourse.
A.I.R. will be a multifarious project consisting of an open studio at Tiwani Contemporary, where Rita GT and Francisco Vidal will produce work in situ and stage daily performances; and a virtual exhibition and artist blog, updated daily. Alongside an exhibition of existing work by all three artists, the open studio will produce new work using Vidal’s u.topia Machine, a 60 x 60cm plywood box containing an all-in-one toolkit for creating art. The u.topia Machine represents e-studio’s direct experience of international mobility and the erosion of the sense of being tied to one place or time. Borrowing from Bauhaus and Constructivist ideals, e-studio Luanda symbolises the postmodern, itinerant artist, caught between geographical contexts and cultures.
Follow the artists' blog http://africanindustrialrevolution.com/ for daily updates on their work-in-progress.
This project is made possible thanks to the generous support of the A.G. Leventis Foundation.