Practice for Everyday Life is a new exhibition presented by Calvert 22. Opening on 23 March and running until 22 May 2011, Practice for Everyday Life showcases new work from a selection of emerging artists from Russia, including Tanya Akhmetgalieva, Olga Bozhko, Alexander Ditmarov, Julia Ivashinka, Sergey Ogurtsov, Taus Makhacheva, Anna Titova and Arseniy Zhilyaev. The title for this exhibition is loosely derived from the seminal text by theorist, Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life. “As a way of framing this group of artists, it felt both an appropriate and playful reference point, with the double meaning evoked by the word ‘practice’ nicely conveying both a conviction of intention as well as a sense of ongoing experimentation and development,” the organisers say.

Press Release

Practice For Everyday Life - Young Artists from Russia
23 March – 22 May 2011
*Press View 22 March 10am – 1pm*

Featured Artists:
Tanya Akhmetgalieva, Olga Bozhko, Alexander Ditmarov, Julia Ivashinka,
Sergey Ogurtsov, Taus Makhacheva, Anna Titova, Arseniy Zhilyaev

In association with the Institute for Contemporary Art (ICA) Moscow, Calvert 22 is proud to present new work from a selection of emerging artists from Russia. This unique presentation, conceived as an annual event, aims to convey a vivid sense of current artistic practice in Russia and introduce a new generation of artists and perspectives to the UK.

The participating artists have been co-selected by Joseph Backstein (Director of ICA, Moscow and Commissioner of the Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art) and David Thorp (Calvert 22 Associate Artistic Director) and drawn from the ICA, Moscow and the prestigious START programme, established by the Winzavod Centre for Contemporary Art in order to promote and develop young artists from across Russia.

Both the ICA, Moscow, and START have created a unique forum and context for a discourse in contemporary art among young Russian artists that has been largely missing from the Moscow art scene previously. Beside the ad hoc relationships that usually and perhaps naturally exist between artists, there was no formal means of offering practical and ideological support to assist – especially younger - artists in developing their ideas and being able to discuss and engage with contemporary art practice more globally.

All of the artists involved in this exhibition have directly benefited from being a part of these two programmes. Although they do not represent a trend or even a dominant ‘school’ (such as the YBAs in the UK for example) they do noticeably demonstrate an engagement with contemporary art that is in dialogue with ideas currently being expressed elsewhere in the world. Their practice is predominantly ideas (rather than materials) driven and experiments with a range of mediums and forms including installation, painting photography and moving image.

The title for this exhibition is loosely derived from the seminal text by theorist, Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, in which he combined his various academic, psychoanalytic and spiritual interests to develop a theory of the productive and consumptive activity inherent in everyday life and to show how people will ultimately always individualise mass culture, appropriating and altering all range and types of everyday ephemera to make them their own. Certeau’s proposals are neither definitively the study of “popular culture”, nor necessarily the study of everyday resistances to regimes of power. Instead, Certeau attempts to show that everyday life works by a process of poaching on the territory of others, using the rules and products that already exist in culture in a way that is influenced, but never wholly determined, by those rules and products.

As a way of framing this group of artists, it felt both an appropriate and playful reference point, with the double meaning evoked by the word ‘practice’ nicely conveying both a conviction of intention as well as a sense of ongoing experimentation and development.

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