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Adam Chodzko

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Adam Chodzko
Born1965 (age 58–59)
London, England
NationalityBritish
EducationUniversity of Manchester
Goldsmiths College
Known forConceptual art, installation art, contemporary art
MovementYoung British Artists, Relational Art
Websitehttps://www.adamchodzko.com/

Adam Chodzko (born 1965) is a contemporary British artist, exhibiting internationally. His practice uses a wide range of media, including video, installation, photography, drawing, and performance.

Early life and education

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Adam Chodzko was born in London, England. He graduated from the University of Manchester in 1988 with a degree in the History of Art[1][2] and in 1994 completed an MA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths College, London.[3][4]

Work

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Chodzko's artworks explore the interactions and possibilities of human behaviour "in the gap between how we are and how we could be."[5]

Exhibiting work since 1991, working across media, from video installation to subtle interventions, and with a practice that is situated both within the gallery and the wider public realm, Chodzko's work explores the idea of collective imagination, investigating how the visual might catalyse new forms of engagement between people. His art proposes new relationships between our value and belief systems, examining their effect on our communal and private spaces and working with the documents and fictions that control, describe and guide these systems and spaces. Working directly with the networks of people and places that surround him, often using forms of anthropology,[6][7] he focuses on the relational politics of culture's edges, endings, displacements, transitions and disappearances through a provocative looking in the 'wrong' place.[8] Chodzko's practice operates between documentary[9][10] and fantasy (especially in the form of "science fiction",[11][12] using art to propose alternative realities), conceptualism and surrealism[13] and public and private space, often engaging reflexively and directly with the role of the viewer.[14][15]

Examples of Chodzko's socially-engaged artworks include Product Recall (1994, posters, advertisements and video installation), using the process of a product recall to assemble owners of a particular jacket made ten years earlier;[16] Salò:Reunion[17][18] (1998, posters, advertisements, photographs and video installation made through organising the reunion of the children 'murdered' in Salò (1972), Pasolini's notorious film); The god Look-Alike Contest[19][20] (1992, a mixed media installation created through responses to an advertisement in a classified advertisements paper); and cell-a[21][22] (2002, a slide projection and event, initiated through giving a London gallery's archive to a group of Kurdish asylum seekers to edit and mediate outside the capital).

Chodzko's development of these ideas and processes later became consolidated into a body of work collectively titled Design for a Carnival (c. 2001–2007). This includes works such as Plan for a Spell[23] (2001, a video exploring ritual within the British landscape through programming its image, subtitles and audio to randomly combine in order to release a potential 'spell' embedded within it); Settlement[24] (2004, the legal purchase of a square foot of land as a gift to a stranger), Nightshift[25] (2004, the tracking of a late night parade of nocturnal animals to the Frieze Art Fair, mapped, to provide animal paths through the fair's 'labyrinth' for human visitors to follow) and M-path[26] (2006, the collection and distribution of "appropriate" footwear for gallery visitors to wear, altering their movement through the gallery space, and therefore their perception of it).

A trilogy of video installations, Hole[27] (2007, at Bologna Museum of Modern Art), Around[28] (2007, based in Dublin and partly set in Ballymun) and Pyramid[29] (2008, commissioned for the Folkestone Triennial) developed a series of myths set in the near future and focused on the relationship between a community and its architectural ruins.[30][31] Echo[32] (2009, a video installation commissioned by Creative Time, New York), interweaves archive footage, documentary technique and conjecture to reveal that a derelict military ballroom on Governors Island, New York, was a site used for an anti-materialistic gift-exchange ritual invented by the children of the island's military.

Throughout these earlier works, and further explored in later works such as The Pickers[10] (2009, the editing of a British film archive by a group of migrant Romanian strawberry pickers) and Ghost[33] (2010, a kayak designed by Chodzko for "visiting the dead"[34]), are investigations into processes of how memory, archiving, empathy, identification and the imaginary are shaped by the act of looking.

Because,[35] (2013, at Tate Britain, as part of the exhibition Schwitters in Britain[36]) and We are Ready for your Arrival[11] (2013 at Raven Row, London) further develop these ideas through sculpture, video, drawing and photography, presented as manifestations of the unconscious relationships between individuals and groups; their excesses, displacements and disappearances. Invited by the Benaki Museum, Athens, to work with its collection Chodzko made You'll see; this time it will be different,[37][38][39] (2013), an exhibition as retrospective, of 20 apparently 'old' posters advertising exhibitions (with themes ranging from: Jealous Animals to Unpopularity) of the Benaki collection, set in the future (2065–2078), and sited in often 'impossible,’ peripheral spaces, dispersed to the outskirts of Greece.

Place as a site which appears to exercise power and influence over the people who happen to occupy it is often explored through Chodzko's use of displacement, separating objects and images from their familiar and 'natural' time and situation in order to relocate them in the "wrong place" so that a change might be catalysed by that dislocation. A series of works entitled Better Scenery[40][41][42] (2000–2002) sited pairs of mutually dependent billboard signs at various locations in the world giving travel directions to the location of the opposite sign. The Flasher[43] works (1990-1996) were a series of one-minute videos, shot by Chodzko, documenting darkness being temporarily illuminated by marine distress-flares, with these sequences individually disseminated by adding them to the surplus tape following the credits of VHS feature films tapes rented from video rental-stores.

The theme of physically remote but intimate cross-cultural social networks, operating on both a conscious and unconscious (or even supernatural) level, has been a consistent theme in Chodzko's work, from the anticipation of digital social-networking communities in the Transmitter[44] series (1990-) and The god Look-Alike Contest[45][46] (1991) and more recently in the installation A Room for Laarni, Image Moderator[47] (2013). This latter series of mixed-media works are based around the relationship and flow of images between a western European social-networking site (for teenagers) and an image moderator, based in the Philippines, whose job it is to monitor this flood of digital photographs, in order to flag up those whose contents might be deemed 'bad'.[48]

Deep Above[49] (2015) and Rising[50] (2013) expose a process of 'making sense of imagery' in relation to our collective and individual responses to the threat of climate change. These works speculate that, inadvertently, a repurposing of ‘art thinking’ might be the only way of short-circuiting the psychological paralysis (caused by our brains’ hardwiring[51]) so that we might take action in order to avert climate change, while Sleepers[52] (2016) explores our empathic projection when encountering the imagery of the unconsciousness of others. Channel, Rupture[53], 2015 and Design for a Fold[54], 2015, both continue Chodzko's speculations about the effects of flows of empathy across time and space and between the local and the remote. Many of Chodzko’s works evolve through this sense of projecting outwards from the self into the perception of, not only other people, but also the inanimate through migratory embodiments with objects, rooms, places, institutions, images. Recent works have continued explorations into the relationships between place (particularly the idea of ‘the garden’), perception, identity, mythology, ritual, language, the body and the unconscious (e.g.; A Hostile Environment[55] (2019), Fluid Dynamics; The Quail is Rising[56] (2020), O, you happy roots, branch and mediatrix[57][58] [live] (2020), Thru hole I blind/O/Thru hole oui see[59][60] (2020)).

Although curated into many of the major Young British Artist exhibitions (e.g.; Sensation (art exhibition), and Brilliant!) of the 1990s (and in 2014, London Calling[61]), Chodzko's practice - from his 1990 works with pre-internet social networks via classified advertisements - is more closely identifiable (through its notions of participation, process, intersubjectivity and community) with the Relational art that was to follow (partly in opposition to the dependency on spectacle that defined YBA art). Kevin Jackson, (1996)[62] singled out Chodzko from the other YBA's for his art's "pensiveness", involving "quiet acts of infiltration...nothing to do with one-line shock effects." In 2013, Dan Fox, reappraising the diversity of British Art of the early 1990s,[7] writes of Chodzko's work from this period as developing a "British occult modern... behavioural experiments to probe the public sphere.", whilst Jonathan Jones (journalist) described Chodzko as a "subversive...master of provocation"[63] in The Guardian.

Exhibitions

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Since 1991, Chodzko has exhibited at numerous venues around the world including Tate Britain; Tate St Ives; Venice Biennale; Royal Academy, London; Deste Foundation, Athens; PS1, NY; Ikon Gallery, Birmingham; Kunstmuseum Luzern; Henry Moore Institute, Leeds; Yorkshire Sculpture Park; Athens Biennale; Istanbul Biennial; Benaki Museum, Athens; and Folkestone Triennial.

His commissioners include Creative Time, NY; The Contemporary Art Society; Frieze Art Fair; Hayward Gallery and Film And Video Umbrella.

Chodzko has been included in many British Council curated international exhibitions of British Art including General Release[64] (1995) in Venice, Micro/Macro: British Art 1996-2002,(2003), Mucsarnok Kunsthalle, Budapest, Breaking Step[65] (2007), Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade, and Private Utopia[66] (2014), Japan.

Awards

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In 2002, Chodzko received awards from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists award, and in 2007 was awarded an AHRC Creative Research Fellowship in the Film Department at the University of Kent, Canterbury. In 2015 Chodzko was shortlisted for the Jarman Award.[67][68] In 2016 Chodzko received an award from DACS ART360[69][70] in order to facilitate the comprehensive archiving of his artwork from 1990 to the present.

Collections

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Chodzko's work is in the collections of the Tate; The British Council; The Arts Council; The British Film Institute; Artist Pension Trust; Auckland City Art Gallery; Contemporary Art Society; The Creative Foundation: Folkestone; Frac Languedoc-Rousillon; GAM - Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Turin; Grizedale Arts; LUX; Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna; Plains Art Museum, North Dakota; Saatchi Collection, South London Gallery; Towner Gallery, Eastbourne, Wellcome Collection[71] and many international museums and private collections.[72]

Teaching

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Chodzko's involvement in teaching Fine Art at Higher Education and Further Education institutions, on B.A. and M.A. degree courses includes, in the UK; Central Saint Martins,[73] Chelsea College of Arts,[74] Slade School of Fine Art, Goldsmiths University of London, University for the Creative Arts,[75] Sheffield Hallam University,[76] Liverpool John Moores University, Ruskin College, Oxford and with young people at Open School East.[77] In the US: Carnegie Mellon University, Rutgers University. In Canada: Banff Centre.[78] From 2014-2018 Chodzko was Senior Lecturer in Fine Art[79] at the University of Kent's School of Music and Fine Art, based at Chatham Dockyard.

He is on the Faculty of Fine Art for the British School at Rome.[80]

Notes and references

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  1. ^ "Alumni - School of Arts, Languages and Cultures - The University of Manchester". www.alc.Manchester.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 22 June 2017.
  2. ^ "Adam Chodzko - British Council". www.BritishCouncil.jp. Archived from the original on 1 July 2018. Retrieved 22 June 2017.
  3. ^ Tate. "Adam Chodzko: Proxigean Tide - Exhibition at Tate St Ives - Tate". Tate. Retrieved 22 June 2017.
  4. ^ "Adam Chodzko :: Foundation for Contemporary Arts". foundationforcontemporaryarts.org. Archived from the original on 4 March 2015. Retrieved 14 June 2024.
  5. ^ "Adam Chodzko". Artist Pension Trust. Retrieved 22 June 2017.
  6. ^ Andrew Wilson,'The Sacred and Traversal of Social Space', Adam Chodzko Proxigean Tide, Tate Publishing. 2008. pp 25-32, ISBN 978-1-85437-825-5
  7. ^ a b "Then & Now". www.Frieze.com. Archived from the original on 24 September 2015. Retrieved 22 June 2017.
  8. ^ Grant Pooke, "Contemporary British Art, An Introduction", 2010, pp 206–8, Routledge. ISBN 978-0415389747
  9. ^ "Life in Film: Adam Chodzko". www.Frieze.com. Archived from the original on 24 September 2015. Retrieved 22 June 2017.
  10. ^ a b "MAP Screen - The Anthropology Effect () - MAP Magazine". MAPMagazine.co.uk. Archived from the original on 29 December 2016. Retrieved 22 June 2017.
  11. ^ a b "Raven Row". www.RavenRow.org. Retrieved 22 June 2017.
  12. ^ "Adam Chodzko British Science Festival 13 - Invisible Dust". InvisibleDust.com. Archived from the original on 1 December 2017. Retrieved 22 June 2017.
  13. ^ Andrew Wilson,'The Sacred and Traversal of Social Space', "Adam Chodzko Proxigean Tide", Tate Publishing. 2008. pp 25-32, ISBN 978-1-85437-825-5
  14. ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 26 March 2014. Retrieved 22 March 2014.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  15. ^ "People - Banff Centre". www.BanffCentre.ca. Archived from the original on 2 April 2015. Retrieved 22 June 2017.
  16. ^ "Product Recall - Chodzko, Adam - V&A Search the Collections". collections.VAM.ac.uk. 22 August 1994. Retrieved 22 June 2017.
  17. ^ Teresa Macrì, Il Manifesto, "In cerco di Salo", 8 November 1997.
  18. ^ Jonathan Jones, The Guardian, "Faces of Evil", p. 12, 18 August 1998.
  19. ^ Rob Legge. "The Faces of God", The Independent on Sunday, London, pp.40-41, 19 September 1993.
  20. ^ "Adam Chodzko (b. 1965), The God Look-Alike Contest". www.Christies.com. Retrieved 22 June 2017.
  21. ^ Mark Crinson, Mnemotechny of the industrial city; Urban Memory Routledge. pp 202-208, 2005, ISBN 978-0-415-33406-8
  22. ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 23 March 2014. Retrieved 22 March 2014.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  23. ^ "Film and Video Umbrella - Plan for a Spell". www.FVU.co.uk. Retrieved 22 June 2017.
  24. ^ "The SLG's Collection - South London Gallery". www.SouthLondonGallery.org. Retrieved 22 June 2017.
  25. ^ Gabriel Coxhead, "Who let the wolf out?" The Times T2, 13 October 2005.
  26. ^ Then, Essays by Jaki Irvine, Andrew Wilson, Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith, Breaking Ground 2008 ISBN 978-1-904662-08-2
  27. ^ D-sign.it. "Step 2 - Adam Chodzko - Mambo". www.Mambo-Bologna.org. Retrieved 22 June 2017.
  28. ^ "- - Public art directory - Public Art". www.PublicArt.ie. Retrieved 22 June 2017.
  29. ^ "Adam Chodzko". FolkestoneArtworks.co.uk. 12 April 2013. Archived from the original on 1 May 2017. Retrieved 22 June 2017.
  30. ^ Proxigean Tide, essays by Martin Clark, Martin Herbert, Lisa Le Feuvre, Andrew Wilson, Tate Publishing, ISBN 978-1-85437-825-5
  31. ^ David Barrett, "Bad Timing", Art Monthly, no. 318, cover, pp 1-6, July 2008.
  32. ^ Roberta Smith (25 June 2009). "Island as Inspiration and Canvas". The New York Times.
  33. ^ "Adam Chodzko's Ghost - Exhibition - River Tamar Project". TamarProject.org.uk. Archived from the original on 23 March 2014. Retrieved 22 June 2017.
  34. ^ "Nom De Strip". NomDeStrip.co.uk. Archived from the original on 6 October 2012. Retrieved 22 June 2017.
  35. ^ "Schwitters in Britain: Tate and Grizedale Arts commission - Tate". www.Tate.org.uk. Retrieved 22 June 2017.
  36. ^ Tate. "Schwitters in Britain - Exhibition at Tate Britain - Tate". Tate. Retrieved 22 June 2017.
  37. ^ "INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF ART CRITICS - ADAM CHODZKO". www.AICA-Hellas.org. Archived from the original on 8 May 2021. Retrieved 22 June 2017.
  38. ^ Zeykili Despina, "What will the Benaki be showing in 2076?", Athinorama, 14 November, pp 92-93
  39. ^ Pari Spinou, "Benaki Museum in the Time Machine", Efimerida ton Syntakton, 19 November, p 33
  40. ^ "Arizona, NW3". The Guardian. 24 January 2000. Retrieved 22 June 2017.
  41. ^ Jane Rendell, Site-Writing, pp. 230, 232, 233. I.B. Tauris
  42. ^ Tate. "'Better Scenery', Adam Chodzko, 1999". Tate. Retrieved 20 December 2020.
  43. ^ "Embedded Art and the Perils of Patronage (MAP #24 Winter 2010) - MAP Magazine". MAPMagazine.co.uk. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 22 June 2017.
  44. ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 24 March 2014. Retrieved 24 March 2014.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  45. ^ Rachel Greene, Internet Art, Thames and Hudson, pp.206–207, ISBN 978-0500203767
  46. ^ Andrew Renton, Adam Chodzko, Room for Laarni Image Moderator p. 31, Marlborough Contemporary. ISBN 978-1-909693-05-0
  47. ^ "Adam Chodzko, by Helen Sumpter / ArtReview". ArtReview.com. Retrieved 22 June 2017.
  48. ^ www.dandelion-burdock.com, dandelion & burdock (24 November 2013). "Adam Chodzko: Room for Laarni, Image Moderator". ThisIsTomorrow. Retrieved 22 June 2017.
  49. ^ "Adam Chodzko – Deep Above". invisibledust.com. Retrieved 20 December 2020.
  50. ^ "Rising - Adam Chodzko - Great North Run Culture". greatnorthrunculture.org. Retrieved 20 December 2020.[permanent dead link]
  51. ^ Bloomsbury.com. "Don't Even Think About It". Bloomsbury Publishing. Archived from the original on 14 January 2021. Retrieved 20 December 2020.
  52. ^ work, Adam Chodzko: video (28 October 2016), Sleepers 2016 Adam Chodzko, retrieved 20 December 2020
  53. ^ "Adam Chodzko: Expulsion from the Garden of Eden, 18 July – 27 September, 2015". Archived from the original on 22 January 2021. Retrieved 20 December 2020.
  54. ^ "Canterbury Christ Church University - Design for a Fold". www.canterbury.ac.uk. Retrieved 20 December 2020.
  55. ^ "Counterpoints Arts". Retrieved 20 December 2020.
  56. ^ "Essex Road 6 – TINTYPE". Retrieved 20 December 2020.
  57. ^ "Adam Chodzko". The Botanical Mind. Retrieved 20 December 2020.
  58. ^ Chodzko, Adam (20 December 2020). "O, you happy roots, branch and mediatrix (2020)". www.adamchodzko.com. Retrieved 20 December 2020.
  59. ^ "Adam Chodzko". MTP. Retrieved 20 December 2020.
  60. ^ work, Adam Chodzko: video (7 November 2020), Thru hole I blind/O/Thru hole oui see, 2020. Adam Chodzko, retrieved 20 December 2020
  61. ^ "London calling: Breakthroughs in British Art, 1986 – 1998". Archived from the original on 28 March 2014. Retrieved 26 March 2014.
  62. ^ Kevin Jackson, 'Brit Pop Art', Arena, April, pp.60–66, 1996
  63. ^ Jones, Jonathan (5 July 2013). "Bad boys v sex dolls – the week in art". The Guardian. Retrieved 22 June 2017.
  64. ^ "British Council − British Pavilion in Venice". Archived from the original on 11 May 2014. Retrieved 3 April 2014.
  65. ^ "British Council − Art Collection − Whats on". Archived from the original on 7 April 2014. Retrieved 3 April 2014.
  66. ^ "Private Utopia - British Council". www.BritishCouncil.jp. Retrieved 22 June 2017.
  67. ^ "Jarman Award - FLAMIN Projects Landing Page". FilmLondon.org.uk. Retrieved 22 June 2017.
  68. ^ "The Weird And Witty Film Art Up For This Year's Jarman Award". Londonist.com. 30 November 2015. Retrieved 22 June 2017.
  69. ^ "DACS ART360 award". Archived from the original on 16 August 2018. Retrieved 15 August 2018.
  70. ^ "Adam Chodzko". Art360 Foundation. Retrieved 20 December 2020.
  71. ^ "Being Human | Wellcome". wellcome.org. 4 September 2019. Retrieved 20 December 2020.
  72. ^ "Film - School of Arts - University of Kent". www.Kent.ac.uk. Retrieved 22 June 2017.
  73. ^ FoxLand. "The Way Things Work (cycle three) - Archive - Double Agents". www.DoubleAgents.org.uk. Retrieved 22 June 2017.
  74. ^ Team, University of Arts London, Web. "MA Fine Art - Chelsea College of Arts - UAL". www.Arts.ac.uk. Retrieved 22 June 2017.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  75. ^ "About Us | UCA Schools". Archived from the original on 23 March 2014. Retrieved 23 March 2014.
  76. ^ "GRAVITY". Gravity21.org. Archived from the original on 19 January 2016. Retrieved 22 June 2017.
  77. ^ "Young Associates Programme". Open School East. Retrieved 20 December 2020.
  78. ^ "Programs | Banff Centre".
  79. ^ "Fine art lecturer in new exhibition on climate change". News Centre - University of Kent. 27 November 2017. Retrieved 20 December 2020.
  80. ^ "Governance « The British School at Rome". Retrieved 20 December 2020.

Further reading

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