Bearspace

ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW is a platform of four exhibitions drawing together some of the most innovative and exciting artistic talent in the UK exclusively throughout 2012. Taking its name from Robert Wise’s classic 1959 Film Noir, ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW is curated by Julia Alvarez and Katherine Hawker who assume the role of detectives. Alvarez and Hawker unveil underground artists and arrange them into artists gangs, by identifying trends and talent for 2012 and tomorrow, compiling a snapshot artists anthology.

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BEARSPACE presents EXHIBIT A, the first installment of the ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW series, introducing artists Rebecca Ackroyd, Thomas Adam, Talar Aghbashian, Dermott Punnet, Jayne A Smith and Gabo Guzzo.

‘I’m just going outside & I may be some time’ were the fateful last words spoken by Captain Lawrence Oates, who perished during the Terra Nova Arctic Expedition to collect Emperor Penguin eggs of 1910–1913. Dubbed the ‘Worst Journey In The World’, the party of six Englishmen were stranded for 21 months as ships could not reach them, and forced them to shelter from the brutal Antarctic winter in a cave dug into the snow.

EXHIBIT A takes this phrase as a jumping point - artists imagine desolate landscapes, isolation, and futuristic visions after the apocalypse through their individual practices.

Dermott Punnet and Jayne A Smith paint lush, neo-modernist scenes which span between the utopic and distopic, while Talar Aghbashian’s sci-fi inspired paintings com found imagery with painterly intimacy spanning optimism and pessimism.

Rebecca Ackroyd and Thomas Adam utilise graphite and traditional drawing skills to enact the suspense and terror of the last living man, and Gabo Guzzo’s sound piece sets a score to the scene: the quiet murmur of an abandoned vista.

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