May Day

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MAY DAY: THE DARK TIMES (Editor’s Choice≠1)

Curated by Paul Sakoilsky, editor of The Dark Times

45 Robertson Street
Hastings
East Sussex
TN34 1HL

Private View 6–9pm Friday 1 May 2009

Exhibition 2 May–12 June Wednesday–Sunday 11am–6pm

Contributing artists and writers for exhibition and publication:

Petra Johanna Barfs | Christine Binnie | NoNose | Cedric Christie | Leigh Clarke | Marc Vaulbert de Chantilly | Andrew Cooper | John Cussans | Aidan Dunn | Thomas Draschan | Selena Godden | Mark Hammond | Richard Heslop | Dick Jewell | Dan Langton | Dean Kenning | Calum F Kerr | Peter Lewis | Lee Maezler | Elizabeth Manchester | Susana Medina | Stephan Micalef | Nasrin Montag | Anne Charlotte Morgenstein | Makiko Nagaya | Richard Niman | Derek Ogbourne | Laura Oldfield Ford | Sophie Parkin | Mark O’Rorke | Raul Pina | Paul Renner | Imogen O'Rorke | Paul Sakoilsky | Liam Scully | Dallas Seitz | Martin Sexton | Bob and Roberta Smith | Rose Smith | Sarah Sparkes | Gavin Turk | Mike Watson | Jürgen Wolfstädter


In 2007 Paul Sakoilsky started collecting London's free (and other) newspapers "from train, bus and street, editing the covers with paint and collage, adding, altering and deconstructing image and text to create a new periodical: The Dark Times. With the passage of time and the appearance of each succeeding cover this act of subversion has grown into an impressive body of work: at once satire and psycho-social investigation".
At F-ISH gallery, the artist curates/edits ‘May Day: The Dark Times (Editor’s Choice≠1), the first extension of the project into the arena of curation. It will be an exhibition of essential works by international and emerging artists; many pieces exhibited for the first time. Whilst being fully respectful of individual works, the gallery will function as 'The Dark Times: Press Office≠3', an overall installation in which carefully chosen pieces will be set into dialogue. A further element will be the production of a special, first ever printed edition of The Dark Times, made up of commissioned work and text. This will be issued both as an affordable, standalone newsprint catalogue-paper, and as a limited boxed edition, with digital c-prints of selected pages.
Opening on May Day, a day on which Hastings town starts its Green Man celebrations the show runs over a 6-week period. The idea of May Day and Beltane is to be seen as an important conceptual framework, as a celebration of the international struggle for workers’ (human) rights, as much as for its ancient lineage as a celebration of fire, fertility and rebirth. The editor is interested in the alchemical-like power of discourse and art, akin to what critic and artist Dean Kenning terms 'Art-Energy'[1], to question and to transform everyday struggle and materials.
An editor's desk will be set up in the gallery from where Sakoilsky will periodically make a special edition in situ. From here, he will conduct symposia, inviting artists and thinkers from a variety of discourses, and the public to join an interdisciplinary purview of the times we are in, and where we might be heading. These will be published through the dark times podcasts and website set up for the project in collaboration with F-ISH's eco-hosted/solar-powered website.
Part of F-ISH gallery's Guest Curator Program.
1. ECO-ART: Art in an age of ecology - Dean Kenning, Art Monthly, Feb. 2008