PRESS RELEASE
Simon Tegala: Undivided & Indivisible
AICON Gallery, London 8 Heddon Street London W1B 4BU
9 April to 8 May 2010
Private view: Thursday 8 April, 6.30 - 9.00pm
Undivided & Indivisible is a solo exhibition by London-based artist Simon Tegala. In the show Tegala explores life systems and the nature of humanity. He often employs new complex technologies to elegantly display simple yet universal ideas.
The sculpture A Matter of Life and Death is an installation of mesmerising beauty. It comprises a pair of transparent acrylic spheres each containing a spinning water vortex. The speed, height and rotation of each vortex is governed live by data from the United Nations population clock. One vortex reacting to the births in the world and the other to the deaths in the world in a poetic display of humankind's life and death on this planet. They highlight how our world has changed and become a global society through new technologies.
Murder with Impunity is a conceptual artwork that continues Tegala's interest in asking questions of human desire. The work involves a series of knives, each engraved with the artist's signature, and for sale. The purchaser is asked to sign a legal contract that states that they could use the knife to commit a murder, leave the knife at the scene and the artist will take responsibility. Murder with Impunity is intended to test the philosophical boundaries an artwork, the extent of the law and the notion of culpability.
"This practically haemorrhages issues: the artist as immoralist or redeemer; the power of money;
the buying, selling, and "stealing" of human life; the nature of responsibility; the acte gratuit; the
definition of "incitement"; the operation of laws; the dispensation of justice... It's a smart, urgent
piece." (Rachel Withers)
Tegala will also present new works based on his 1998 piece Anabiosis in which he monitored and transmitted his heart rate live to a large electronic screen in London's Covent Garden. These pieces each display twentyfour hours of the artist's life and act as self-portraits. Tegala uses these works to comment on his awareness of being alive using the heart beat as the most representative symbol of an individual's life. As analytical works they invite the viewer to consider their own lives and the passing of time.
Simon Tegala works across a range of media from drawing, photography, sculpture, video and digital based artworks. Since graduating from Goldsmiths College, Tegala has exhibited internationally, including the Whitechapel Art Gallery, Hayward Gallery, Kunshallen, Gothenberg, and the National Gallery of Demark. He was a awarded the NESTA fellowship in 2000 and represented the UK in the 2003 Havana Biennial.
Tegala has a permanent work in the Science Museum, London. He developed the launch for the Cultural Olympiad for the East of England in 2008 and has a forthcoming solo exhibition at the John Hansard Gallery, Southampton.
Press information and images: Jo Fells. Tel: +44 (0) 7977 226187, jo@jofells.com
Exhibition and sales: Niru Ratnam. Tel: +44 (0) 20 7734 7575, london@aicongallery.com
Aicon Gallery London is open 10am – 6pm Tuesday – Saturday
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7734 7575
www.aicongallery.com