WE LIVED HAPPILY DURING THE WAR

Exhibition Details

We lived happily during the war brings together a group of artists to explore themes of war, notions of dislocated landscape, and supernatural fictional narratives. Curated by Denise Hawrysio, the exhibition features work by Michael Allgoewer, Jordan Baseman, Denise Hawrysio, Marc Hulson, Rebecca Scott, and Stanislav Turina.

This is the third exhibition at Cross Lane Projects’ new gallery in Hoxton, London, which was founded by artists Rebecca Scott and Mark Woods. Visitors are invited into this uniquely intimate space to read, reflect, discuss, and view contemporary art in a salon-like setting. Located in a private residence on the road that bears its name, Vestry St presents a programme of curated exhibitions and events by leading contemporary artists, both local and international.

About the artists

Michael Allgoewer is a Montreal born artist, living and working in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. His work consists mainly of assemblage-based sculptural components, which form larger installations. These pieces usually reference the historical and mythical past to elucidate universal, metaphysical themes. Recurrent motifs are symbols such as the shield, the skull, arrows, and architectural references ranging from the gilded picture frame to cathedral floor plans. Handout began as a found object from which a mould was made. A multitude of hands have been cast since, each unique because the honey-locust thorn which pierces the palm, is always slightly different. Aside from obvious allusions to stigmata and crowns of thorns, ‘Handout’ is a poignant metaphor for sacrifice, suffering and existential pain.

Jordan Baseman is a visual artist and filmmaker. He received a BFA from Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and an MA from Goldsmith’s College, University of London. Baseman is currently the Reader in Time-Based Media, Senior Tutor in Moving Image at the Royal College of Art, London. Jordan Baseman is represented by Matt’s Gallery London. Gigantic (2019) is a brief experimental portrait of a train ride to a funfair. Recorded on 16mm film, using in-camera animation techniques. An anxiety driven, sugar-overloaded stuttering recollection. A day out gone wrong. Yet, a sigh of relief. The original music propels the concertinaed time-lapse.

Denise Hawrysio was born in Toronto and currently lives in London, UK. She received her BFA from Queen’s University, Canada, and her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. She works in a variety of media and materials including site-specific installation and print. She has been an active member of London’s art scene for many years, founding her own project space in the early 90’s, working collectively with many of Britain leading artists. Her work deals with issues of displacement, hybridism, transience and mutation, utopia and dystopia, memory and identity. Hawrysio, who is of Ukrainian descent, responds directly to the war with a new set of collages. Juxtaposing images excised from old National Geographic magazines with contemporary war imagery, unexpected links are invariably forged, producing a primordial emotional tug between revulsion and fascination and probing the complacency of the gaze.

Marc Hulson is a London based visual artist. Informed by a longstanding engagement with experimental, speculative and supernatural fiction, his paintings and drawings chart a specifically pictorial and personal field of the weird, alternating between the spectral and the visceral within a densely interwoven lexicon of imagery. The works survey an enclosed pictorial world – a psycho-symbolic realm in which a succession of figures both human and non-human play out uncertain roles. Often ambiguous in gender, masked or subject to physical distortions and deformations, they haunt a dislocated backstage arena. He also practices collaboratively in diverse fields (moving image, sound, installation, performance) and contributes to the programme at the artists’ co-operative association and project-space Five Years. He is a Lecturer in MA Fine Art at Central Saint Martins.

Born in Cumbria, Rebecca Scott gained an MA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths University, London, and a BA in Fine Art (Painting) from Chelsea School of Art, London. She currently lives and works between London and Cumbria, and is Co-Founder of independent art spaces Cross Lane Projects. The Meat series of paintings emerge from the inherent conflicts surrounding notions of “the
romantic” and “the real”, and most particularly, in the dichotomy opposing the ideals of nature with the realities of farming. The quintessential beauty of the countryside offers a sheer and at times, almost obscene contrast to the harsh reality and demands of modern industrial farming. It is however, this very distance and illusion that the artist attempts to depict in the paintings, arguably trying to reconcile the banality and availability of the meat with the sensuality and carnality of the flesh.

Stanislav Turina is a Ukrainian conceptual artist, writer, and curator. He is one of the most prominent Ukrainian artists of his generation. Turina was born in 1988 in Makiivka in Eastern Ukraine (now under Russian occupation) and studied at Lviv National Academy of Arts, Ukraine. Since 2018, Stanislav has lived and worked in Kyiv. He is the co-founder of Black Circle Festival, 2010, Detenpula Gallery, Lviv, 2011, Open Group collective, 2012 and atelienormalno a studio for artists with Down Syndrome, 2018 in Kyiv. Stanislav is a co-curator of land art symposium Mohrytsia, 2018, 2021 and received a Scholarship from Gaud Polonia, Lublin, Poland. He represented Ukraine at the 56th Venice Biennale and was a participant at the 57th and 58th Venice Biennales. Since 2018, he has co-curated studio atelienormalno for artists with Down’s syndrome. At the beginning of the Russian invasion, Stanislav decided to stay in Kyiv to help people with disabilities at the Pavlov psychiatric hospital and Pusha-Vodytsia boarding school.