Wildermenn
An art collective exploring transhumance in the city, animalisms across five art mediums, wholly collective, fundamentally collaborative - the Wildermenn produce artworks that subvert and celebrate the rituals and rites which are essentially linked to that which is forgotten in the sprawl - fertility, procreativity, seasons, elements, creatureliness and death. Anthropomorphic modernist folk practise from cultures now unknown find form in sculpture, noise, performance, fragmented poetry and mud paint.
Formed in 2013, the Wildermenn bring together expertise in five complimentary mediums to explore the potential of essentially cohesive collaboration. I wrote a poetic sequence of the same title, which was featured in my 2014 collection the Rottweiler's guide to the Dog Owner, which was exhibited, illustrated by David Kelly Mancaux at the first Wildermenn exhibition in December 2013. The next Wildermenn performance will be in layer 2015
http://wildermenn.weebly.com/ https://twitter.com/wilder_menn
David Kelly Mancaux - Robert Hitzeman - Ben Morris - Josh Alexander - SJ Fowler
the premiere exhibition of the Wildermenn collective, beginning December 18th and closing just before Xmas, will take place at the House gallery in Peckham, London. http://www.house-gallery.co.uk/ Wildermenn combines visual art, poetry, sonic art and sculpture into one wholly collaborative art collective about urban transhumance. http://wildermenn.weebly.com/ https://twitter.com/wilder_menn The exhibition is curated by Gabrielle Cooper.
about the exhibition: Wilder is a decomposing cathogan sculpture piece, which has been wholly constructed from the beach detritus that litters the banks of Thames and is the common quarry of mudlarking. A beast, the Wilder is a rotting, half animal, half vessel, castrated and jawheavy - assaulting the eyes, ears and nose, the mansize figure is a grotesque vision of what the city and it's river has spewed up realised in it's skeletal, lackadaisical glory.
A special view and performance evening will take place on Thursday 19th Dec, doors opening at 7.30pm, entrance is free. It will be an unforgettable evening of organic mush and destruction. Please come along, a poster attached.
The impetus for making new work is firmly on the process for me, Ive been explicit about this in interviews etc.., and so the impetus behind being part of a collective, like the Wildermenn, is in the collective process. Our first exhibition is in the past, it ran just under a week at the House gallery in Peckham, and speaking in strict creative terms, it was a joy. I shouldve done more, a lot was put on the other members, but the concepts we had originally, to make the gallery an environment, covered in detritus, centred by an immense beastly sculpture made of river mess, came to fruition, and it gave us an excuse to cross practises, as we had intended. On this side of things, it was a great success, it happened, and it is partly for the greater process anyhow, to continue on, forward, to be active in new uncomfortable realms. At times, on the practical side of things, it was too uncomfortable. Working exhibitions from the ground up in a city like London can be thankless, it can feel like it is all for yourself. We had a lovely special view, plenty of people, but it felt exhausted at times, the end of the year. Which it was. There'll be another Wildermenn exhibition in 2014, I am sure, and so many lessons that needed learning will be in effect. & the work remains. it speaks for itself, hopefully.
