Vegas Gallery

" Family Viewing: The Teenage Kicks Episode"
12 October - 11 November 2007
Jemima Brown
Dean Chalkley
Luc Dondeyne
Erica Eyres
David Hancock
Ivan Jones
Alex McQuilkin
Ari Versluis
Klaus Wanker
Daniela Wolfer
Angie Reed

Private View: Friday 12 October 18.00-21.00
12 October - 11 November 2007
Open: Wednesday - Saturday 12.00-18.00

Teenage Kicks is the new episode of FAMILY VIEWING, a project initiated by the artist
Jemima Brown during 2005. She proposes as a starting point a collaborative model of working
that falls between the traditional processes and divides – or at least the representation of these – between artists and curators. These groupings or ‘families’ of artists and curators will work
together to produce projects or ‘episodes’. In effect, each episode becomes a snapshot or family album of the family dynamic created by Jemima with each new family: a new configuration of artists
and a new curator for each space hosting the project.

ALEX MCQUILKIN
'Seven Minutes'
videostill
Courtesy of Galerie Adler Frankfurt – New York

KLAUS WANKER
'Cheap entertainment (10 seconds to fuck off)' 2007
Oil on canvas
Series of three paintings
Each75 x 75 cm
Courtesy Galerie Adler Frankfurt – New York

JEMIMA BROWN

DAVID HANCOCK
'Mother, I Can Feel the Soil Falling Over My Head'
2007
Acrylic on Canvas
244 x 147 cm
Courtesy The Agency Gallery, London

DANIELA WOLFER
'Sarah II'
2005
Oil on canvas
120cm x 60 cm
Courtesy of Galerie Hammelehle und Ahrens, Cologne

DANIELA WOLFER
'Sofie II'
2006
Oil on canvas
120cm x 60 cm
Courtesy of Galerie Hammelehle und Ahrens, Cologne

LUC DONDEYNE
'Spoetnik I'
Oil on canvas
142 x 81 cm
courtesy of Transit Art Gallery, BE

TEENAGE KICKS
Jemima Brown, Dean Chalkley, Luc Dondeyne,
Erica Eyres, David Hancock, Ivan Jones,
Alex McQuilkin, Ari Versluis, Klaus Wanker,
Daniela Wolfer, Angie Reed
12 October- 11 November 2007
Private View: Friday 12 October 18.00-21.00
Open: wednesday - Saturday 12.00-18.00
www.vegasgallery.co.uk
64-66 Redchurch Street London E2 7DP

PRESS RELEASE
Release Date: 18 September 2007
Curator: Melanie Moreau
Ken Pratt, co-curator

"I need excitement oh I need it bad/And it's the best, I've ever had" -The Undertones (1978)

Vegas Gallery, as part of the edgy Brick Lane area, couldn't be a better choice to welcome the new episode of Family Viewing " Teenage Kicks". Initiated by the artist Jemima Brown during 2005, and as part of her practice, Family Viewing is a broad interpretation of the idea of 'family'.
Each episode invites artists and curators to become a snapshot of the family album. The artists
selected today cover a full range of media and practices, proposing miscellaneous interpretations
about the pubertal world, the search for a unique social identity, and its consequences within family and society.

In the grand tradition of rebellion, the simple act of dancing becomes a provocation with Daniela
Wolfer and Ari Versluis. Through flashy sexuality and frenzy, yet trapped between childhood and
adulthood, they seem to desperately search a way to escape the existential questions of a future.
In the same sense, David Hancock's painting and Alex McQuilkin's video recreate melodramatic
scenes who express an intriguing duality between beauty and destruction, where theatrically
excessive, they can veer from comic to tragic in a matter of moments; and vice and versa.

Their rite of passage are various, yet similar. Dean Chalkley reports the excitement to believe in a new and different generation, yet familiar, where despite getting messy or dirty, they remain kind of sweet and innocent. Teenage is a posing time under influence.
From fashion or movie icons with Klaus Wanker, to rock stars with Luc Dondeyne, the desire to be someone special can be mistaken with the one for fame and recognition. Even Angie Reed's young punk dreams about it, since Warhol's prophecy created a cult for individualism via celebrity and stardom, as the only way to uniqueness.

Not to forget they are fragile. Erica Eyres and Jemima Brown's ambiguous drawings, a media
usually attached to children, show disturbed and/or disturbing lolitas, when Ivan Jones' s work
thrives on a familial tension with a sense of foreboding and claustrophobia. Nowadays, teenagers are searching for clues to their identity within a society where dysfunctional families are common, with ageless and disoriented parents who compete with them in the search for happiness.

Though everyone remembers the angst of being a teenager, we also long for their excitement
and their dreams, since the beatniks and the hippies reduce the gap between generations. And
perhaps, as Teenage Kicks suggests, in a society where hedonism and individualism are treasured, teenager's behaviours seem no longer only referring to the puberal world.

For further information and images, please contact: Suzanne Schurgers
Tel: 07726750762 or Email: [email protected]