ISMAIL ERBIL ART

Ismail Erbil is an artist based in London.

Site for information on new exhibitions, work in progress and presentation ideas.

Artist Statement:

Ismail Erbil’s practice investigates the body and its relationship to hybrid cultures. Ideas of gender, domestic interiors and traditional ceremonies as experienced in the artist’s own Turkish background and upbringing in London inform his practice. Erbil’s installations and sculptures reference both traditional and non-traditional uses of materials that create an in-between space for re-interpreting the body, creating other-worldly reconstructions of the self.

Works such as Tea Garden juxtaposes both the iconography of conservative historical object with explicit found imagery to suggest those sub-texts in domestic social conventions that remain unsaid, unspoken and veiled.

Within Erbil’s installations there are references to rituals, domesticity, cultural and sexual identity which are informed by his Kurdish/Turkish background. It’s important to mention that while having autobiographical references his work refers to a broader dialogue about identity, cultural dynamics and increasingly, interventions in materiality.

Within his sculptural assemblages he interweaves new narratives through association and appropriation to create an ‘otherworldly’ quality. He interweaves ‘new narratives’ to approach the ‘other’ and create spaces for such stories to take place. Erbil accesses actions relevant in the domestic setting of a household and transplant these actions into a wholly unrelated context making new connections between materials objects and behaviour.

Ismail Erbil completed a B.A in fashion design at Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design, London in 2002.

Upcoming exhibition:

Schwartz Gallery Project Space, 14th October 2011
Solo Show: Installation

Recent group shows include A-L-L-O-T-M-E-N-T-S 2011, Unobtrusive Measures, curated by Mark Selby (2011), Patrick Michalopoulos and Ismail Erbil, 2010 (Schwartz Gallery Project Space), A-L-L-O-T-M-E-N-T-S (2010) and Wonder Island (2009), Flux (2008) at Schwartz Gallery, and Across the Grain at Forty Hall, London (2008) and his work has been shown at the Powerhouse in Brisbane, 2004, Australia.

In addition to his studio practice, Ismail is also co-founder, director and artist-curator of Schwartz Gallery.
http://www.schwartzgallery.co.uk

i.erbilart@live.co.uk

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Archive

Jan 19

POWERLESS STRUCTURES 18.01.2012 – 25.02.2012

Russell Chater

Blue Curry

Ismail Erbil

Valentin Faline

Corinne Felgate

Rowena Harris

Kit Merritt

Patrick Michalopoulos

Adam Parkinson

Sarah Pucill

Eva Roovers

Curated by Ismail Erbil

Private View: Wednesday 18th January 2012, 6 – 8.30 p.m

Exhibition dates: 18th January – 25th February 2012

First Thursdays – 2nd February 2012, 6 – 9 p.m

POWERLESS STRUCTURES, a group show curated by Ismail Erbil at Schwartz Gallery, investigates relationships between a variety of structural paradigms and their attendant power functions. Selected artists variously unpick and re-work vehicles of belief, desire, illusion and entertainment from the theatrical and the field of design to religious architecture and out-dated scientific models of knowledge. The resulting works blur formats of the every-day with the format of the gallery. The notion of power is broken down and recycled allowing for a splintered landscape of power and anti-power to emerge. Each artist’s practice is concerned with process-based investigations and methodologies that variously explore materiality, sculpture, performative actions, social interaction, the written word, photography and film. Looking at how the image/object is constructed through these different avenues, constructions of the self, the domestic environment, the body and of culture are dynamically inter-linked giving rise to new interpretative models. Thought of as a series of questions or set of decisions, the works resonate an open or unknown trajectory of meaning that is rooted in the everyday yet separated from it. A doubling occurs that takes the viewer on a journey of disrupted reflections and altered destinations.

Opening times:

Thursday – Saturday 12 – 6pm

Gallery Address

Schwartz Gallery

92 White Post Lane

Ground floor, Building 2

London, E9 5EN, UK

http://www.schwartzgallery.co.uk