CLASSifications
A rocket launches in between the gallery walls, a pheasant’s feather raises itself on top of an assemblage, a dining table is set inviting you to digest a film whilst being transported to a familiar home. This exhibition includes works from four artists – Jasleen Kaur, Dinu Li, Jamila Prowse and Joshua Raffell – working with objects to explore how we impart them with meaning and classify them, and in doing so, become a metaphor for how class functions in our society.
Class is a complex system. It is often depicted in abstract and subjective ways, difficult to visualise or comprehend in tangible terms. Class is represented through counterintuitive expressions of objects as a means to talk about one’s identity. The artworks offer a rich tapestry of often celebratory, explorative and surprising methods to talk about disability rights, the diaspora, craftivism, play, queerness and the family archive.
The objects within this gallery are animated; they glow, they float, they whisper and mock. You are invited to be amongst these objects, reflect on the lives they (mis)represent and question how class is embedded, marketed and co-opted by the reigning narratives. What does class look like nationally and internationally? How does it affect one’s perception of ourselves and others? How does class intersect with identity? How does class affect the way people consume, make and talk about art?
CLASSifications and its public programme offers a starting point to discuss ‘class’ and invites visitors to engage with an often unspoken, misjudged and neglected issue, to better understand how we can come together in building a fairer and more equitable world.
About the artists
Jasleen Kaur
Jasleen Kaur is called towards plurality, declassifications, polyphony, the blur. She refuses funds from Baillie Gifford, Outset Contemporary Art Fund, Zabludowicz Collection and Freelands Foundation. She is practising singing in the sediment till she is intoxicated.
Her work has been shown at Tramway, Scotland (2023), Touchstones Rochdale (2021), Wellcome Collection, London (2021), Serpentine Civic, London (2020), Glasgow Women’s Library, Scotland (2019), Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Newcastle (2019), MIMA, Middlesbrough (2018), Cubitt Gallery, London (2018), Eastside Projects, Birmingham (2017), Jerwood Space, London (2015). In 2019 her book Be Like Teflon was co-published by Glasgow Women’s Library and Dent-de-leone. She was awarded the Paul Hamlyn Artist Award in 2021. In 2024, Kaur was nominated for the Turner Prize Award 2024.
Dinu Li
Dinu Li was born in Hong Kong and currently lives and works in Cornwall, UK. Li is an interdisciplinary artist working with the moving image, photography, sculptural assemblages and performance. In his practice, Li examines the manifestation of culture in the everyday, finding new meaning to the familiar, making visible the seemingly invisible. Archives play an active role in Li’s work, and they are often used as points of departure for his projects. His methodology is research based, with an emphasis on appropriation and reconfiguration. Li’s work is often characterised by problematising the document as part of the modus operandi.
Li has exhibited both nationally and internationally, including the 53rd Venice Biennale; the 3rd Bucharest Biennale; Tashkent Biennale 2007, Uzbekistan; Tatton Park Biennial 2012; EVA 2005; Contact FotoFest 05, Toronto; PHotoEspana 13, Madrid; Bildmuseet, Umea, Sweden; Oldenburger Kunstverein, Germany; the Irish Museum of Contemporary Art, Dublin; White Space 798, Beijing; the V&A, London; OCT Loft, Shenzhen; Konsthall C, Farsta, Sweden; Chalk Horse, Sydney; San Antonio Art Gallery, Texas; and Alternative Space Loop, Seoul.
Jamila Prowse
Jamila Prowse is an artist and writer, informed by her lived experience of disability, mixed race ancestry and the loss of her father at a young age; her work is research driven and indebted to Black feminist and crip scholars. She is an active participant in a rich and growing contemporary disabled artistic community and has been ongoingly researching, programming and creating around cripping the art world since 2018. Self taught, Jamila is drawn to experimenting with a multitude of mediums in order to process her grief and radical hope.
Previous exhibitions and talks include TULCA Visual Arts Festival, (Galway Ireland), Ormston House Gallery, (Limerick, Ireland), Somerset House, South London Gallery, Studio Voltaire (London, UK) and Hordaland Kunstsenter (Bergen, Norway). Her writing has appeared in Frieze, Art Monthly, British Journal of Photography and elsewhere.
Joshua Raffell
From a working class and canal gypsy background, Joshua Raffell is an outsider on the inside. He is a gay and dyslexic artist living with depression. Joshua is a champion of diversity, and his work is influenced by his life experiences.
Having left education with no qualifications, later in life he was supported by City Lit to discover his potential and where he was awarded an Outstanding Adult Learner in Visual Arts Award 2007. He studied at Sir John Cass (BA Hons), where he was awarded the Owen Rowley Award for originality. Following his MA at Chelsea School of Art, he was selected for the ‘Young Gods’ show by Zavier Ellis at Charlie Smith and Griffin Galleries in 2014
He now lives and works on the Isle of Wight. In 2023 Joshua exhibited at Studio 1.1, London, Monkton Arts, Ryde and Quarr Abbey on the island. He has been awarded bursaries by ‘a space’ arts and Isle of Wight Creative Network.
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