Image: Mladen Hrvanovic

Image: Mladen Hrvanovic

Concept

For a dialogue to form, the process requires another. When another is presented the dialogue becomes a dichotomy. Do we adopt another persona according to who we are talking to and how genuine is that chat? According to David Bohm, no one wins a dialogue; a dialogue is an exploratory process and does not work towards a goal. However, Mikhail Bakhtin held that relationships and connections exist among all living beings, and that dialogue creates a new understanding of a situation that demands change.

Dialogue can be seen as an exchange but this exchange is not always equal or amicable, it can manifest into an emotional charge, disagreements, it may lead to conflicts, irrationality, fake romances, or jealous contingencies. Does dialogue hinder us or further us?

Liam Herne



'You Know....'
Video

'You Know....' links to the theme of irrational dialogue and the contrasting points of view that can be carried by one person. The video contains video footage and photos of myself making an experimental art work exploring perspective and narrative in the middle of a field. However the sound on the piece is myself talking inside my head questioning the purpose of what I’m doing and my ability as an artist. I wanted to reflect the feeling of inadequacy and uselessness that I’m sure creeps up in an artists mind when he or she is making a piece of work.

Carlos Franklin


'Good French Bad Spoken' 'Making the Task, Not Taking Care of the State'

The first one is GOOD FRENCH BAD SPOKEN (film 16mm - screening version in digital betacam or dvd, b/w, stereo, 12 min, french english subtitled), an experimental documentary about people learning french. Three subjects tell their stories produced during their introduction french language starge. We can see the process of that stage, and the way language allows meeting a new culture. The second one is MAKING THE TASK, NOT TAKING CARE OF THE STATE (vidéo mini dv - screening version in dvd or mini dv, stereo, colour, 6 minutes, french, no subtitles). This one shows a subject (myself) doing the phonetics and writtings exercices used to make in french classes. That subject drinks alcohol at the same time untill the drunkness and the total incomprehension. You can see those videos in the website www.driprop.fr

Michal Iwanowski


'35 Years On'
Photograph, C-Type print 80x80cm

"To enter a relationship is to open a complex dialogue. Some thirty-five years on, the dialogue still operates, having changed its intensity and dynamics. It exceeds the language, the emotion, the negotiation of power. It has identified the obvious, and it includes the unspoken. A photograph on my parents."

Sousan Luqman


'Pitch'
Foam board, copper wire, paper, 20x100cm

'Pitch' is an analysis of three speeches from three politicians at the onset of war. I have concentrated on rhetorical linguistic ploys used to inculcate certain emotive words and phrases in our minds. Their language blinds us and as a result we agree to the decisions made on our behalf unaware of their catastrophic outcomes.The words have undergone a tortuous process; examined, dissected and eventually pitched on copper wire. As part of a body of text, the words have strength in numbers, but now isolated, they are vulnerable, manipulated by the unpredictability of the wire.

Garrett Lynch / Frédérique Santune


'Video Network #1: Dialogues' video installation
Single channel documentation video

Video Network #1: Dialogues, is a two channel non-linear video installation created by artists Garrett Lynch and Frédérique Santune. The installation employs a custom designed electronic interface, which enables the creation of networked or connected video based art works.

Each artist conceived of an exploratory video within the locality of the other. Two separate video works, based on ideas of place, appropriation, exploration, walking, mapping, performance and opposites (or binary); male and female, Irish and French, night and day etc., were created in isolation. Within the installation these two videos communicate, in effect network and influence each other, creating constantly changing compositions.

http://www.asquare.org/project/videonetworks/dialogues/

Zeev Parush


'Face to Face'
Staged Photography 70x50cm

Dialogues can turn some times into an emotional argument during which our role can change from being exposed to exposing each other feelings and thoughts.
In this work I use as a metaphor the painting "The Third of May 1808" by Francisco Goya, to portray this phenomenon.

Olivier Deprez


'Red Series, Waiting'
Oil on canvas

The works of Olivier Deprez are based on reality. His paintings look like snapshots, accidental recordings of everyday phenomena: an elder couple waiting in a station hall, someone on a escalator, etc. Deprez reproduces them realistically, but ensures that details are highlighted within the painting process. In so doing he ensures that his paintings remain identifiable for the audience, but they are never translated directly into the fabric of the paint. The artist flattens out small details, so that his paintings acquire a strange anonymity. Or he intensifies colours so that the painting suggests a more emotional experience where one wouldn't expect one.

Ellen Nolan


Untitled
C-Type digital print

‘Previous Personality’ explores the artist’s relationship to her mother as she recedes into dementia. Ellen Nolan documented herself and her mother in key moments over two years, to explore the journey of reversal and erosion.
Nolan started photographing herself and her mother when her mother stopped recognising her as her daughter.
www.ellennolan.com

Julie Hill


'Pause'
Laser print on carbonless paper

A pause in a dialogue can mean many things, a simple stop for breath or perhaps something more sinister. This fictitious form asks the impossible: an articulation of something that cannot be articulated, yet invites speculation about the meaning that inhabits these ‘so-called’ empty spaces.

Charlie Hurcombe


‘Something, Someplace #1 to #81’
Continuous 35mm Slide Projection

‘Something, Someplace #1 to #81’ is a suitably vague and reticent title for an artwork which consists of images brought about through the combined use of two distinctly different forms of visual language; generic linear drawing and photography. Within each of the 81 35mm slides presented a range of opposing conditions are established. The impersonal sculptural drawn object is apparently out of place within the once personal yet now anonymous and discarded junk shop sourced 35mm slide. Any original narrative has been replaced with something seemingly impossible yet readily visible and present, both threatening and humorous whilst being intimate yet ultimately remaining
intangible.

Lucya Blu



'Simulacrum'
Photographs

"Simulacrum represents relationships' process with its most stereotyped mechanics, showing mis-comunications and discrepancies between genders as a mutual contamination of one another's personalities. Dialogue becomes a power struggle, in which the characters exercise authority upon each other by focusing on the target of their control. Whilst exchange may seam equal, the effects follow a pattern in which the subjects lose their monochromatic individuality to a forceful exchange of opinions in search for compromise".

Iana Vulpe


'Four in a room 1' and 'Four in a room 2'

This two works were inspired from the Eugene Ionescu’s short plays. They refer to the play “The viscount” written in 1950-1951. I didn’t intend to illustrate the play. Although I vas challenged to bring into one image the happening of the entire play. Working I was concerned for creating a faire situation, that’s way I used a linear composition and avoided as much as possible grouping the figures.

Claire Freer



'Clarence and Henrietta’
34cm x 49cm x 26cm, Plaster, oxide finish

Through an exploration of the unconscious, and being led by and giving form to a feeling; the process allows for an uncanny discovery, permitting an element of chance or indeterminacy. ‘Clarence and Henrietta’ a dichotomy; emerging from a splitting, each form holds its own engaging in an unspoken dialogue.

Sabatin Bascoban



'The Making of La Botte Gonflable', Video on DVD, 12 min., French with English subtitles.

A young woman is looking for a way to take things easy. She fantasizes about an ideal state where life is nothing but a walk on puffy clouds. In a series of short episodes we get to know her and the way she deals with the demands of the outer world. She does so by communicating on different levels with the viewer (the man behind the camera): in intimate situations, in an interview, by making faces and pantomiming, and by explaining her "invention" and commenting on it to another person over the phone.

Kirsten Powell


'In Memory'
Photographs 50x70cm

Through my work I investigate language.
‘In memory…’ explores the use of language to remember. Plaques were placed on park benches to commemorate the small personal memories that we may all have experienced. It also questions the truth of our memories and how much of what we remember is selected. For example when people remember ‘the good old days’ they may actually be recollecting a manufactured romantic ideal.

Paola Minekov


'Echoes of Romance' diptych

Lack of communication between lovers leads to power-play, manipulation and pain. What interests me is the roles people then assume, their intricate psychological reactions to each other and to their troubled relationships.
I’ve chosen a cold monochrome tonality to depict silence and the resulting emotional distance between two contrasting, disintegrating figures. www.paolaminekov.com

Mladen Hrvanovic



'PROTOTYPE 0.1'
Installation: Wallpaper + Video

Joel Muggleton



'Replacement'


I am interested in the idea of ignition in sculpture how by placing two objects together a dialogue is formed thus activating the work. Replacement can be read as a conversation between objects we know to function together, formed from a set of ‘job materials’, which retain a use-reference. Derived from, and inspired by, construction sites and shop re-fits (situations in flux with a sense of on-going), my sculptural arrangements, although a set of stationary objects, have movement in the potential uses/ roles that the scene suggests, along with a space for the viewer (as participant) as they become involved.

Emanuela Santini



'Laura's Book'

Laura’s Book deals with a subject matter that has been guided by my own inner life, emotions and physical experiences born out of overwhelming feelings. It is a dialogue of intimate thoughts.

Lauras Book, installation, consists of artist book Anatomy of remembrance, 210x148,5 mm, 19 pages and audio piece Soundtrack of my Mind, a poem/writing read by Laura Smith, duration 6' 58''

Kate Moyse


'Babbling in the Tower'

Babbling in the Tower is an installation, which explores the struggle to communicate feelings by dissecting the dialogue between two estranged people who are trapped together in a white room. Their meeting is unplanned and emotionally strained. Battling each other with elaborate theories and hiding behind words, neither can actually win their conflict. Struggling to control themselves and each other only leads to further fears and limits their ability to listen to each other. The two people’s dialogue is typed in separate books and presented on two white tables one meter apart.

Anna-Marya Tompa


'Empty Gesture'
Video

”Empty Gestures” concerns the dialogue of the artist. In the video the artist makes elaborate gestures in a one-sided conversation. In the foreground plays a sequence of hands from Cold War statues and socialist realist paintings reduced to being gestures and evoking the hand of the artists that created them. The dialogue that remains is one of history and memory.

Mary Rachel Fanning


'The Trophy'
Video

The Trophy ebbs and flows between a tranquil habitat and dramatic displays of “the hunt.” The viewer becomes the voyeur waiting for the catch.... the fish to be ripped out of the water with the hook and line, or the female body to emerge from abstraction into a concrete image.

Vivian Pedley


'A Soho Romance'
Drawings 22x17 " (Series of 9)

A Soho Romance is a text driven series of images. The dialogue is assumed by a third party watching two people engage across a bar room. No words are spoken. However, the voyeuristic speculation of the viewer creates a storyline through nine moments of brief flirtation.

Stuart Alexander


“Non Fiction” © 2010
Photographs 50x50cm (Series of 9)

Taken on a 1950’s ex-police camera once used to document crime scenes, the camera’s past function has imbedded itself into the images and the images reflect this by suggesting negative occurrences when in many cases they are of innocent events. The previous function of the camera, being purely functional removes the possibility of fraud in the mind of the viewer due to the neutrality created by the function in the way that the viewer will only see the subject and not the intention to deceive. With these images there is a focus on more negative suggestion, which is related to the artist’s interest in the question “do people usually assume the worst?” based on the idea that if the audience are only given a small amount of information, they create the rest, based on their fears, neurosis or expectations based on the media, in effect creating their own truth.


“Why is non-fiction called “non” fiction?
It suggests that Fiction came first. Why not call it “real” or “truth”? Is it because there is no such thing, because truth is a fallacy? The fact that this collection of photographs is called “non-fiction” is an attempt to imply, regarding its original definition, that the photographs are of real events that actually happened. In fact “non-fiction” implies that truth is a fiction in itself, is relative. It implies that some of these images aren’t quite true. Which they are not. Some can be nothing other than real; others seem too extra ordinary or absurd to be true. There are others that are somewhere in between. The intention is to blur the boundary between truth and falsity to highlight that this is in fact the norm.

Ted Barlow



'Awesome!'
193 comments selected from a possible 3547 March – December 2009

‘Awesome!’ consists of 143 selected blog comments from my own Photoblog profile + all 50 comments that contain the word ‘awesome’. The comments are some of the most heart-warming, humorous, thought-provoking or simply bizarre moments from this period. Each comment, taken out of context from its original blog, intensifies in these attributes. Yet together they form an abstract narrative that strangely begins to make a greater sense as the reading progresses. Many lines, themes and threads drift in and out of this narrative and far from the blog-maker gradually building an auto-biography, the commentators unwittingly provide a biographical discourse around the artist.
‘Awesome!’ challenges and explores the conventions and relationships between the artist (blog-maker), the artwork (the blog) and the spectator (commentator). There would be no point in a blogger posting a photograph if there were no-one to view and ultimately respond to it. By adding a comment to the blog, the spectator is participating in the artwork. Conversely, the blogger now becomes the spectator by revisiting the blog and viewing it in its new context. The blogger may then wish to reply to the commentator and thus becomes a respondent to the artwork in its new form. So the artwork, the artist and the spectator are constantly changing and shifting roles. Of course, not all commentators are commentating to the photographs or text provided by the original blog-maker, but to other comments on the blog. Dichotomies arise and the artist has little or no control over these, again raising questions as to who is actually making the art / discourse.
What ‘Awesome!’ provides, are individually selected elements from these blogs and presents them as both a new artwork and idea of these relationships.
The 50 additional comments containing the word ‘awesome’ are a brief look at the way we communicate to each other in this forum. The single word comment ‘awesome’ is sometimes considered to be a ‘throw away’ compliment by someone too busy or lazy to actually think of anything else to write...but is it? Even if that were the case, then is any comment with the word ‘awesome’ in it devalued?

http://www.photoblog.com/tedbarlow/2009/12/20/

Dermot Punnett


'Alter' 'Dwelling lll' 'Untitled (fuse)'
oil on canvas, 50cm x 70cm

These paintings question the boundaries which define form through a process of dislocation and suspension. Objects are pulled apart and suspended in space, ridding form of its sense of containment, separateness and isolation.

The content of these paintings are the interaction of man-made forms built within the landscape, and the primordial natural environment. These forms undergo a breaking down of their physical structure by nature, and show an erosion of differences within a dynamic process.

Kristina McDermott



‘I Am Your Outside’

∞ + ∞ + ∞



In this collection of work Kristina explores aspects of interpretation and communication. She sets up interactive installations and organises collaborative projects that invite viewers to respond to an image or scene, allowing for a subject to be viewed from multiple perspectives.



In ‘I Am Your Outside’ participants were invited to write a response to the work and then attached it to the installation until the structure was entirely covered and the scene inside no longer visible, allowing new viewers to see only other people’s interpretations of what existed inside.


In ‘Say What You See’ over 100 people from an area in North London were invited to write a response to a collection of 12 drawings. Responses were then collated into 12 books and exhibited in the local area, allowing for the full range of responses to be viewed and compared.

Gali Timen


Photography

A conceptual artist with a (dark) sense of humour. She deals - in her practice - mostly with aspects of childhood (e.g. the wish to touch, try things, to ask planty of questions; the funny way the adults world can looks like from a point of view of a child). These two pieces are part of a series of two images that come along on the same photogrpic paper. It asks questions about adults behaviour.
Has MA Fine Art, Central Saint Martins College, London

Alex Wilk

Pull, light. 2009, 67 x 32 cm, Steel, candle and digital print

Drink, Drink. (Clothes Peg) 59.4 x 84.1 cm, Digital print on self adhesive vinyl.

Drink, Drink. (Grater) 59.4 x 84.1 cm, Digital print on self adhesive vinyl.

Drink, Drink. (Juicer) 59.4 x 84.1 cm, Digital print on self adhesive vinyl.


Contemporary life is saturated with biased dialogues, disguised as fair conversations but in reality are weighted and predetermined in their direction and outcome. This silent rhetoric that is inescapably present in our lives heavily directs my practice. It is coupled with a fascination with the human affinity with meaning: our ability to reflect, project and absorb it. I enjoy taking an absurdist stance when creating my work, deliberately trying to negate meaning by scrambling the usual codes of communication employed in advertising and the language of diagrams, though relishing its impossibility - negating meaning certainly creates it.
www.alexwilk.wordpress.com