COLONY AT ZOO ART FAIR 2007

NIKOLAS ARVANITIS, TERRY ATKINSON, JONATHAN BALDOCK, EMMA BARROW, ANNE MAREE BARRY, MONA CASEY, AMANDA COOGAN, GREG COX, MICHELLE DEIGNAN, SUSAN FINLAY, NEVAN LAHART, PETER LLOYD LEWIS, PAUL MCAREE, RYAN MCCLELLAND, FLÁVIA MÜLLER MEDEIROS, GAVIN MURPHY, RACHEL O'HARA, TOM RANAHAN, CHRISTINE SULLIVAN, JOHN TIMBERLAKE, NEIL ZAKIEWICZ

Zoo Art Fair

Royal Academy of Arts, 6 Burlington Gardens, London W1S 3EX

12 - 15 October 2007

COLONY will be appearing at the Zoo Art Fair 2007. With a modest space at the fair, COLONY will nonetheless present the work of 21 artists.

COLONY is an artist-led exhibition space in Birmingham UK, established in November 2005. Dedicated to mounting exhibitions which look at the nature of 'work', several COLONY exhibitions have used strategies such as architectural interventions to compromise or draw attention to the autonomy of the artwork within a thematic gathering of works.

Alongside the exhibitions, one commission for each show is non-gallery based - or non-visual based - and so far each COLONY exhibition leaflet has been offered to a writer or artist-writer to suggest a work in a different way. So far each one has been a text. This refers back to an idea that art does not have to be visual, and provides an important opportunity to offer an alternative avenue for 'work'.

For Zoo 2007 COLONY will represent some of the following artists:

Terry Atkinson has played a significant role in the direction of international contemporary art through his practice and teaching. In 1968, he was one of the founder members of the highly influential collaborative art group Art & Language, which was centred on Coventry School of Art where Atkinson taught between 1966 and 1973.

Atkinson's paintings use commonplace visual forms such as snapshots, cartoons, postcards and sketches. These are often accompanied by texts, which give clues as to his intended meanings, but also highlight the ways in which images are misinterpreted. Paintings and drawings come out of his long-standing interest in politics, philosophy and the relationship between art theory and practice.

Emma Barrow's sculptures are conceived from the nature of their making. Inherent properties and features are exaggerated with aerosol to corrode and metallically metamorphose found polystyrene forms.

Amanda Coogan's live events often form the basis for her videos and photographs. She has a real ability to condense an idea and to communicate it through her body. The performances are short, snappy and sassy, reflecting MTV generation values. She has her finger on the pulse of the modern psyche and this allows her to connect with her audience. Sometimes the work paraphrases iconic images, like the sacred heart or Michelanglo's David, but the artist jolts her audience into finding new meaning in the familiar. Coogan studied sculpture in NCAD in Ireland and an MA in Performance Visual Art in Germany with Marina Abramovic. She performed in 'Marking the Territories' at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in 2001 and was an award winner at EV+A 2002, Limerick. In 2003, among others, she performed at the Venice Biennale and at P.A.C. gallery, Milan. In 2004 Coogan was awarded the Allied Irish Bank's Annual Artist of promise prize. She exhibited at the Irish Museum of Modern Art's Artists for Amnesty show, The Liverpool Biennial International 04 and had a solo show at Derry's Context gallery as part of their Joyce festival. She also performed in performance loop, PS1 New York and at Cleaning the house NMAC, Malaga. In January 2005 Coogan published the first monograph on her practice, 'A brick in the handbag' in conjunction with her solo show at Limerick City Gallery of Art. She performed at the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, as part of their Egon Schiele exhibition and exhibited at the MARTa Museum, Herford, inaugral exhibition (my private) Heroes and the De LA Warr Pavillion's Variety exhibition, among others.

Greg Cox uses readymade objects such as furniture, crates and trolleys, which are characteristically discarded and worn, and indicative of different periods of manufacture. Through dissection he transforms these once functional domestic objects into minimal artworks and creates a tension between the familiarity of the wooden surface and the flat smooth surface of the laminate.

Michelle Deignan graduated from the National College of Art and Design in Dublin in 1992 with a BFA in Sculpture. Made and exhibited photographic and installation works, wrote art reviews, facilitated visual arts workshops and worked as a part-time visual arts tutor at the College of Marketing and Design and at Dun Laoighaire College of Art in Dublin until 1996. Began making video works while studying for Post Graduate in Electronic Imaging at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, Dundee, Scotland, from '96 - '97. Living in London since 1998. Founded Variablemedia with Simon Goodwin, an on-line project space for process orientated art works, (2002 - 2005). Video editor for various broadcast documentaries, music concerts and artists' film projects. Awarded the Professional Development Award from Arts Council of Ireland for Associate Research at Goldsmiths College London, which was completed in 2005. Visiting Tutor at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design on the BA Time Based Art and at The Ruskin School of Fine Art, Oxford.

Susan Finlay's tenuous sculptural works employ symbolic imagery juxtaposed with more abstract and formal elements, referencing chance, magic, religious iconography, Eastern culture and Minimalism.

Flávia Müller Medeiros was born in Brazil, Flávia completed her Associate Research Fine Art program at Goldsmiths College in London 2004. Based in London since 2002, she has curated Examining My Own Practice (2004), a group exhibition that included collaborations with Emma Kay, Jemima Stheli and four other artists concerned with performativity. Flávia utilizes video to make her work, her project Failed, Emerging and Young (2004) is an ongoing compilation of interviews with established and emerging curators/artist-curators including Lisa Le Feuvre, Gavin Wade and Nicolas Bourriaud. The work is a subtle re-appropriation of the didactic language and the languages of documentary and interview, to subvert the art world language and the ideas of the market and art.