ABOUT

The US psych-rockers, The Electric Prunes, once sang ‘I had too much to dream last night… I’m not ready to face the light.’

Taking this as its overall starting point, Too Much to Dream invites you to a show by a collective of six radical artists who, through striking imagery to immersive installations, bring their personal and unique vision that pulses with energy and thrusts deep into the subconscious.

With haunting images, symbolism and surrealism, interwoven with the rebellious energy and subversion of pop art and agitprop, the collective offers a glimpse into the shadowy corners of the human psyche.

Join us for an unforgettable journey to the centre of the mind at Phoenix Art Space, Brighton, 13-17 November 2024.

 

MAXINE ALLAN

Maxine Allan graduated from the San Francisco Art Institute, USA in 1988 with a Bachelor’s in Fine Art, majoring in Sculpture. She worked as an art director and scenic artist while exhibiting in galleries in California and New York.

In 1992, Allan returned to the UK, where her continued fascination with art and the unconscious mind earned her a Master’s in Art Therapy. In 2003, Allan founded Artyfacts Art Academy, an inspirational art programme that allows local children to explore their individuality and self-expression through art.

Allan’s work is a vestige, a trace or remnant of something disappearing or no longer existing. Her layering and found objects are like modern fossils of trophies from the past, where Surrealist conversations happen between the objects.

http://www.maxineallan.com/

BILLY CHAINSAW

Billy Chainsaw is a contemporary Pop Artist whose work uses a fertile mix of pulp and the arcane to engage with ideas of mortality, magick and sensuality.

With his on-canvas, paper and ceramics appropriation of pop and cult iconography, his is a transformative art. Working with paints, screen prints, photographs and decals, Chainsaw has developed a personal armoury of imagery and gestural approaches which are instantly recognisable yet seemingly open to infinite experimentation.

Death always looms large in Chainsaw’s works. And yet – despite the sombre nature of much of the source material – his work frequently strikes a playful note, managing to effortlessly imbue his pieces with a strong sense of energy and light.

The most defining moment in Chainsaw’s life was working as personal creative assistant to Siouxsie and The Banshees, from 1979 to 1996. “it was life changing and taught me most of what I needed to know about life”.

Chainsaw’s previous work has been exhibited in numerous highly regarded galleries such as London’s Saatchi Gallery and The Horse Hospital, and Fleetwood Gallery in San Francisco. He has also designed an album sleeve for indie superstars, The Fall, as well as operating as a film critic and cultural commentator, writing for publications as diverse as Empire, Bizarre and Kerrang!

Website: www.koolkrakenincorporated.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/billychainsawhoulston

GIRL SHIT (ZOE BAILEY)

GIRL SHIT / Zoe Bailey is a multi-disciplinary artist living and working in Brighton, UK.

Bailey’s work explores propaganda, subcultures and female narratives, often referencing art history and DIY cultures. There is a fascination in the work with rituals, magick, cinema and vintage imagery collected since childhood.

Bailey has a BA Hons in Fine Art (sculpture) and exhibits regularly with work owned nationally and internationally and has been long and shortlisted for art prizes from Women in Art Prize and VAA.

https://www.instagram.com/girlshitgirl

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GAVIN JAY

Gavin Jay studied fine art at Kingston University before picking up bass guitar and touring the world with Jim Jones Revue. He kept his hand in with the visual arts designing album covers and tour posters, and in recent years has returned to focusing on his fine art practice whilst continuing to perform and record music, currently with Jim Jones All Stars and Suzie Stapleton.

Influenced by figures such as Max Ernst and Joseph Cornell filtered through Pop Art, Victoriana, the occult, pulp sci-fi, antique toy theatres and anatomical models, Jay brings a unique approach to his surrealist collages. Drawing on a wealth of esoteric imagery harvested from the libraries of the world his work is both nostalgic and quietly disturbing, conjuring scenes from impossible narratives that exist suspended in Lynchian dream spaces.

Jay has participated in various group shows in London and Brighton and in 2019 had his first solo exhibition at HOK Gallery in Den Haag, Netherlands. His work can also be found at L’Oeil Ouvert Gallery in Paris, France.

monodada.com

ROB RINN

Rob Rinn studied at Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen (1990-94). He exhibited in various group shows at the Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh; Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow; Intermedia Gallery, Glasgow; Mall Galleries, London and

Cabinet Gallery, London.  Rinn lives and works in Hastings.

For this exhibition, Rinn has sought to resolve a series of pictures he started, and put on hold, some time ago. Taken directly from an out of print book on World War II the pictures combine black and white photo cut-outs with black and white acrylic paint. Rinn was influenced by Bob Dylan’s ‘Masters of War’, Stanley Kubrick’s ‘Dr Strangelove’, late Samuel Beckett, Terry Gilliam’s ‘Python’ collages and the allegory of ‘Plato’s Cave’. Rinn believes that revisiting these pictures can be like revisiting a dream – trying to piece together the fragments and make sense of them.

MAL TROON

Mal Troon is a musician, sound artist and writer who explores sonic and auditory cultures. His work seeks to excavate notions of auditory permanencies. Permanencies that challenge traditional tropes that sounds are forces confined to ephemeral lifespans and brief timescales; existences born to dissipate into silence.

Through reorganising and manipulating existing and original visual film material, combined with his own original sonic compositions, Troon investigates sound’s positioning when integrated into such an approach. Can auditory permanencies be found in our sonic retentions that we bring to the ‘viewing’ experience? How might they be layered onto our understanding of that view? These notions unveil a new form of diegesis: an ‘antecedent diegesis.’

As such, we transport our ‘silenced’ and internally stored sound in potentiality, and we apply it contingently to understand future experiences. Relative silence for example, is not the absence, but the dormant potentiality of sound in existence.

Dr Mal Troon is a professional musician, writer, lecturer and music tutor based in East Sussex.

mt368@sussex.ac.uk