Enemies: Visual Art & Vanguard Poetry at The Hardy Tree gallery, London: July 6th to 20th 2013

The first and one of the best Enemies exhibitions that ran over two week in the summer of 2013 with multiple events and unforgettable performances. The exhibition showcased brand new collaborations between experimental poets and visual or sound artists in pairs.

Iain Sinclair and Ragnhildur Johanns produced a triptych meditation on Eyjafjallajökull, the Icelandic volanic eruption finding form as a series of wall hung book sculptures - paper forms which appear to be a frozen moment of evolution between the book and the image, crossing Islands north, south and skyward.

David Kelly and Dylan Nyoukis drew together the dangling threads of modernist collage and guttural sound art to fashion a hyper cassette tape mural accompanied by super8 scratch screenings and original sonic dabblings.

Ben Morris & Marcus Slease realised the aberrant underbelly of the gentle metropolis dirge in an acoustamatic tin tin of the city, bringing the offbeat poetics and grinding sonic beauty of London into three dimensions, falling off a wall.

Thomas Duggan and SJ Fowler printed a poem in silk – silk fibroin, entirely biocompatible and biodegradable and programmed to disappear, when required, without leaving any trace – 3D poetry in a revolutionary new material developed using the very latest design technology, that has the potential to realise new environmentally sustainable modes of substance - material never seen in public before.

The exhibition was the backbone of our summer programme in 2013 - four wholly original works of visual art born of radical collaborative practise where six months of exchange comes to fruition in the unique Hardy Tree gallery in St Pancras. The exhibition, and all events, were free of charge and intended as an opportunity for artists, poets and anyone with interest in the field to meet and share ideas along with the work. 

This was a pivotal moment for the development of the Enemies project, as for two week the collaborative and communal feeling was a really remarkable thing to experience.

The Events:

July Saturday 6th – Exhibition opening night:
performances from Dylan Nyoukis & David Kelly, Ben Morris & Marcus Slease, SJ Fowler, Iain Sinclair & Ragnhildur Johanns.

July Monday 8th – Voice art
Celebrating the non-lingual in poetry / avant garde music / sound art, sonic landscapes without technological assistance, experimentation in unpure human sound - performances from Ben Morris. Dylan Nyoukis. Holly Pester. SJ Fowler. Emma Bennett & more.

July Thursday 11th – Mini-lecture Poetics
Short, informal, aberrant talks given by contemporary British experimental poets – Peter Jaeger on John Cage & Buddhism, Philip Terry on poetry novels & the Bayeux Tapestry, Tim Atkins on London poetry in the 90s, Marcus Slease on travelling poetics & more
 

July Saturday 13th – ‘Dear world & everyone in it’
Readings from the groundbreaking anthology, published by Bloodaxe and edited Nathan Hamilton, featuring Fabian MacPherson, Ahren Warner, Stephen Emmerson, Amy Evans, Becky Cremin, Andy Spragg & more.

July Monday 15th – The Contemporary Poetics Research Centre
A rare academic entity, the CPRC, based in Birkbeck College, University of London is a hub for avant garde poets featuring Dan O’Donnell, Ollie Evans, Mendoza, Dan Eltingham, Albert Pellicer, James Wilkes, Vicky Sparrow, Mark Jackson & more

July Thursday 18th – P.O.W.
Edited by Antonio Carvalho, P.O.W. is a publishing project reigniting the great global tradition of concrete poetry. Readings from Chris McCabe, Chrissy Williams, Pascal O’Loughlin & more

July Saturday 20th – Closing night: a celebration of art writing
Brand new performances and artworks from Tom Jenks, Claire Potter, Patrick Coyle ,Tamarin Norwood & a host of collaborative performances from poets / artists involved in the Enemies project.

& these incredible pictures taken by Alexander Kell.