6:30pm in the Loft, Performance by Charmaine Wheatley “What Does Jesus Think of Lapdancing?”

In the Screening Room, 3D animation video by Peter Daverington Arcadia

Kianga Ellis Projects is pleased to announce an exhibition featuring painting, photographic sculpture, drawing, performance and moving image by:

Peter Daverington Nikita Gale Federico Solmi Charmaine Wheatley

In the 20th century, the State, Christian church and Advertising appropriated the visual language of artists to consequential and far-reaching effect. Under The Influence: The Art of Power & Persuasion investigates this history. The artworks in the exhibition re-appropriate confiscated aesthetics and methods of presentation to both expose and make use of tactics by which art has been exploited for political, religious and commercial ends.

Viewers are challenged to ask difficult questions about how the public is influenced by the powerful in society. The artists’ provocations nevertheless reflect great sensitivity to the universal experience of inner conflict aroused by their messages. As such, their art should not be misunderstood as cynical, detached critique. No; their sense of humor reveals something else. These artists count themselves among the seduced.

“The problem is not the incapacity of art to become truly political; the problem is that today’s political sphere became already aestheticized. When art becomes political it has to make an unpleasant discovery, that politics already became art. That politics already situated itself in the aesthetic field.” ~ Boris Groys