Vegas Gallery

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Pascal Rousson in April/May Issue of Artworld magazine:

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Click below to see the Virtual tour of the Christian Moeller works
at Vegas Gallery

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Shane Bradford in the December 2007/january 2008 issue of Artworld Magazine:

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Project (OR) 2008 , the 1 page Ad in Wound, Thanks
to the people from Wound magazine!

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Loose Booty exhibition in Metro, Thursday 31 Jan 2008

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CHRSITIAN MOELLER in 10Magazine- Spring 08

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From 6 until 11 February 2008, the City of Rotterdam will host the international art fair Art Rotterdam subsequently for the 9th time. Vegas Gallery is invited to participate at
Project(OЯ), an international side-event of Art Rotterdam.

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Martin C de Waal and Vegas Gallery in Kunstbeeld nr 2 2008
Click on image to read article..

Kunstbeeld article Translation:

“In Your Face is an installation about my facial plastic surgery. It
was first shown at the end of last year in the Vegas Gallery in London
and will have its Dutch premiere at Art Rotterdam. The installation
consists of a TV screen at eye level framed by mirror tiles. The screen
hangs in the corner so you cannot walk around it. The mirror frame is
about 20 centimeters wide which means if you look at the monitor, you
are also constantly looking at yourself. The remainder of the
exposition area fades away. The mirror confronts you with your own
reaction to the images shown on the screen.

“In Your Face tracks my facial adaptations. I wanted my eyes to become
25% Japanese. The western male Neanderthal forehead does not match
that, so the skull had to be moved back a bit. The operation was not a
result of an artistic need to create, but a pure personal desire
coupled with a great fascination for continual transformation.

“Since I am after all an artist, the result was this feature length
film. I haven’t edited the film to a documentary length, although I
played with the idea. Such an edited version would become too
superficial and freaky. I’m no Michael Jackson.”

“The film lasts six and a half hours, but is at no moment boring. It’s
not a quick fix like you see on make-over shows on TV. This is real
time. At the same time, the images are notable because some rigorous
cutting is being done on a perfect face. I’ve noticed that that creates
emotional confusion in some viewers.

“The film was made with a steady-cam whereby the camera was attached to
the camera man with a hydraulic system. It was thus possible to create
smoothly flowing movements which give the film a somewhat luxurious,
decadent feel. There were several people working on my face
simultaneously so the camera man had to literally wriggle in and out to
be able to get the best views.

“The feeling I wanted to give the viewer was that of voyeurism. He or
she becomes a part of a sort of ritual comparable to Hermann Nitsch’s
"Theatre of Orgies and Mysteries." In the performance actions that the
Austrian artist began creating in 1963, he took the drapes which were
covered in blood red paint and later displayed them as relics.

“Most people see plastic surgery as a sort of horror operation, but the
opposite is true. The images show the surgeons’ dedication and
craftsmanship. It’s as if they are bringing a perfect 21st century
beauty into my face, as well as the face of the viewer. You see how the
surgeons follow the instructions of the chief surgeon. Yet, at the same
time, you feel that the direction of the piece is in my hands as
artist. Even though they’re cutting into my face, I’m certainly not a
suffering object. It’s more like I’m a pharaoh who’s being treated
according to his own strict orders.

“The entire piece emanates an air of respect and dedication from all
involved. That’s true as well for one of the key moments in the film –
when the surgeons peel off my face and pull it down to take away the
bone membrane and begin to saw into my skull.”

Art Rotterdam, 7 t/m 10 February,
Martin de Waal
Translated by Maria Jiménez

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Click below to read the Vegas Gallery Review in

Pictures from Teenage Kicks at FADWEBSITE to see the pictures taken by
Dan Sumption click article below here

Daniel Johnstons exhibition 'Its The End Of The Show' at Vegas Gallery is
published in the november issue of Grafik Magazine in the section:
Essential Things To See And Do This Month.
We hereby would like to thank the Grafik people to devoting a whole page to this!

article about the Ground Zero Size Zero exhibition on realitysandwich.com
written by Aline Duriaud. To read her blog click on image below

Symptoms Everywhere

Ground Zero Size Zero is a group exhibition of European artists currently on at up-and-coming gallery Vegas, located in London's East End. Coinciding with fashion week and curated by Ken Pratt, the show's theme is body dysmorphia and the body as a site of anxiety and uncertainty. From the show's press release: "Anxiety is the best diet for models as it makes them underestimate their ability to survive in an unreal world unless they are more beautiful, even skinnier, beyond better." In an era when alienation from the body's wisdom and integrity is celebrated, performed and re-replicated, what's urgently needed are new visions that challenge a prevailing culture of body fascism without falling into the trap of reinscribing fragmentation in the name of critique.

Some of the work in Ground Zero Size Zero skirts the edge of regurgitating anti-imagination notions of beauty and desirability in the sanitized context of a fine art setting. Voyeurism is a strong current here, as subject and strategy. In her essay The Politics of Black Radical Subjectivity bell hooks quotes Audre Lorde "who said, 'the masters tools will never dismantle the master's house'. Is it possible to move beyond performing symptoms? Many of the artists use a female body, or a body masquerading as feminine (or both) to ask this question.

Aram Tanis shows a series of photographs of Ballardian urban architecture juxtaposed with two images of white female naked bodies. One, distressingly emaciated, lies on a surface reminiscent of a gurney. The other appears to be shaving her genital area into a childlike, hairless mound. The position of her hand also connotes a private shooting up ritual. White female bodies are presented as metaphors for death and disease. The series recalls the opening scenes of Christiane F., where faceless tower blocks are shown as breeding grounds for Christiane's burgeoning addiction along with a mother who is presented as inadequate because she works full-time and has a new boyfriend. In Christiane F. as in Tanis' images a young white girl's ravaged body is an object of desire and prurient horror.

More photos are on offer from Marcelle Price and Martin C. de Waal. Price's Ready Teddy shows a male, cross-dressed figure presenting his backside to the camera. In S/M play men enter and exit the role of the slut at will, using an exaggerated female persona as an escape valve through which to live out fantasies of submission. To what degree does Price's subject occupy his role? Is it compartmentalised into private fantasy or does it bleed into his everyday routine? Man, especially male rock musicians, have routinely used so-called feminine postures and clothing for shock value and to rebel against traditional codes of masculinity without necessarily challenging real, live sexism and discrimination. Indeed, the appropriation of cartoonish stereotypes of passivity might reinforce gender cliches. Price's photo floats these contradictions to the surface of her suburban sub's portrait.

Martin C de Waal is an artist, performer, stylist and club personality who straddles the art and fashion worlds. In an echo of Orlan he submits himself to plastic surgery procedures which are documented and digitally manipulated into grotesque and glamorous photographic self-portaits. Unlike Orlan de Waal self-consciously retains and displays his physical beauty. Also showing is his video loop based on Bas Jan Ader's Too Sad to Tell You, and real time video documentation of one of his cosmetic surgery procedures. Using his face, body and lifestyle as raw materials de Waal has his cake and eat it too: his objectification of himself is on a par with Joyce Wildenstein's and Michael Jackson's facial reinventions (the latter alluded to in Marcelle Price's photo John's Hair Shop), neither of which are officially classed as art.

Sculptural installations by Anna Orton and Maurizio Anzeri dredge up corporeality-as-absence thick with theatrical atmosphere. Orton's Man I feel like a Woman riffs off Real Teddy in its evocation of fetishistic sex and gender tourism; a pair of shiny lace up thigh boots lie crumpled and uninhabited on a mirrored podium suggesting a missing or escaped female or transsexual exotic dancer. The figure of the female sex worker has often functioned in art and literature as a synonym for the forbidden, for corruption and bankrupt consumerism. Nowadays London is saturated with gym-based pole dancing classes and Ann Summers sex emporium outlets, lending the materials of Orton's installation an everyday tawdriness that somewhat destabilises these associations. Maurizio Anzeri, whose work has been exhibited in art, design and fashion contextx, shows a ceiling-to-floor cascade of cheap wigs sewed together into a creepy, elegant assemblage with Surrealist overtones, reminiscent of Hans Bellmer's sadistic doll sculptures and photographs but with a gentler feel. The wigs are blonde and brunette -- presumably manufactured to mimic Caucasian hair.

Painting and drawing are represented by Gert-Jan Akerboom and Simon Willems. I love Willems' paintings, especially C3P0 on his deathbed, which mutates the anthropomorphized robot's slick chrome exterior into a delicate, melancholy watercolour blob on the verge of erasure. Santa's cumming plays with gaudy Christmas decoration imagery, twisting it into shapes and surfaces that traverse and blur organic and inorganic registers; viscous emissions mix with plastic, metal and the texture of paint. Akerboom's mysterious charcoal drawings also combine discordant references. Their stiffly controlled technique is in contrast to their teenage horror slash Goth slash military imagery, like stills from a Michael Haneke film shot on CCTV filtered through de Chirico.

Notwithstanding the slightly clunky title, Ground Zero Size Zero is a though-provoking and smartly curated show. It left me with an appetite for work that tackles the effect, upon representations of bodies, beauty and gender, of the contemporary realities of torture, war, human trafficking and other nightmares swirling around us.

www.theunfairparty.co.uk
11 OCTOBER 2007

it's a collaboration of a curator, deejays, musicians and artists.
It created a crossover event: an art and club world mutant;
a social occasion for those in town for the art fairs,
artists based in London and general hangers-on to relax and enjoy a good party.
In keeping with its (lack of) status as the bastard brainchild
of the doyenne of Trailertrash, Hannah Holland and DJ Cliché
the sounds of the Unfair Party will still churn up the electro-batty-bass-ting sound.
If you don't know what that is, Daddy-O, bring your kids.

In the club space at...

Underbelly @ Zigfrid's
11 Hoxton Square
London
N1 6NU

Martin C de Waal and Vegas Gallery in Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf
on Saturday 29 September 2007

Martin C. de Waal liet gezicht verbouwen, maar…

„Ik ben geen Michael Jackson”

Martin C. de Waal is popmuzikant. Maar ook beeldend kunstenaar. En
fotograaf. En vj. Als klap op de vuurpijl maakt deze creatieve
duizendpoot aanstaande donderdag zijn televisiedebuut als jurylid
van het nieuwe programma F.A.B.S: Search for a Videomodel. Hierin
gaat Jorinde Moll op zoek naar meisjes die kunnen dansen, acteren én
er goed uitzien.
„Misschien krijg ik dan eindelijk erkenning in eigen land”,
grapt de kunstenaar. Op dit moment wordt zijn laatste kunstwerk, de
film ’In Your Face’, over plastische chirurgie, vertoond in de Vegas
Galery in Londen (tot en met 7 oktober: www.vegasgallery.co.uk). Dat
De Waal zelf de hoofdrol speelt in de film, spreekt voor zich.
Hoewel de film, waarin de artiest een meer dan acht uur durende
operatie ondergaat, al enkele maanden geleden werd opgenomen, ziet
zijn gezicht er nog steeds uit als een basketbal. Blauw, geel en
pimpelpaars.
„Tijdens de eerste operatie heb ik een gezichtsverandering
ondergaan, maar daarna ben ik nog een paar keer onder het mes
gegaan”, verklaart De Waal zijn aanzicht.
„Ik wilde mijn ogen 25% Japans laten zetten. Een
neanderthalervoorhoofd past daar natuurlijk niet bij, dus heb ik
mijn schedel naar achteren laten plaatsen. Na een paar maanden vond
ik het resultaat nog niet bevredigend. Daarom heb ik vorige week de
laatste aanpassingen laten doen. De puntjes op de i, zal ik maar
zeggen.”

De operaties kwamen niet voort uit kunstdrang, maar uit
eigen wil. „De film die ik ervan heb laten maken weer wel. Kijk, je
bent kunstenaar of je bent het niet. Ik heb geprobeerd om de film in
te korten tot een tv-documentaire, maar daar zag ik toch maar van
af. Dan haal je net het bijzondere eruit, met het risico dat het
freaky wordt. Ik ben geen Michael Jackson.”

Dat De Waal, die in het buitenland overigens ook furore
maakt onder de naam Duvall („mijn naam werd steeds verbasterd, dit
bleek uiteindelijk de makkelijkste oplossing”), gevraagd is als
jurylid voor F.A.B.S. ligt volgens de kunstenaar niet aan zijn
laatste kunstgreep, maar moet verder terug in de tijd worden
gezocht. „Ik heb in het verleden muziekvideo’s en commercials
geregisseerd. In Nederland was ik bijvoorbeeld de eerste die een
aantal lelijke puisterige gabbertjes onder water liet playbacken: een
bloedgemeen fashionstatement. Ik durf dingen die een ander niet
aankan. Mijn voorwaarde was ook dat ik mezelf mocht blijven in het
programma. Daar is gehoor aan gegeven. Het valt me erg mee, want
tv-volk blijft toch eng. Televisiemakers denken doorgaans vanuit een
format en daar moet je al dan niet aan voldoen. Bij mij weten ze wel
beter en word ik natuurlijk helemaal vrijgelaten in mijn tekst.”
DO. Veronica, 21.30 UUR

Martin C de Waal plus Vegas Gallery on Dutch tv on 26 september 2007:
click on logo and then click on VIDEO WEEK 39
WOENSDAG 26-09: Kunstproject Martin de Waal

Martin C de Waal interview plus Vegas Gallery in Dutch newspaper: Het Parool
Saturday 8 September 2007
To read the article click on image below

FINE TUNING FROM HERE TO ETERNITY :18 september 2007 Antwerp: Martin C de Waals’ new performance operation
Plus Possible Special Disclosure Night to see the New Face.Limited places only.
RSVP to hello@vegasgallery.co.uk

Vegas Gallery is pleased to announce that Daniel Johnston will
be showing his latest works at Vegas Gallery this November.
for stills of the musicvideo for 'True Love Will Find You In The End"
check out the MINIVEGAS website on www.minivegas.co.uk here

The Afterparty for the '4-Mation' exhibition will be held at
Verge from 9-2am on Wednesday 18 July 2007

Laura K Jones reviewed the Dorian Gray exhibition at
The Saatchi Online Daily Magazine .

LAURA K JONES ON DORIAN GRAY AT VEGAS GALLERY, LONDON

In an old stone basement off Brick Lane, through an unmarked door, lies the relatively new Vegas Gallery. A catchy name, Vegas, but one that could easily lead to speculation that the work in the gallery would be showy and shallow. But no, it's a not-for-profit, artist-run affair that is cate-
gorically "Not for Hire"; instead it gives international young artists that haven't yet built up a big
profile a platform to exhibit their work. Vegas' latest exhibition, 'Dorian Gray', is a varied and considered group painting show organised by the unforgettably named Infinity Bunce along with curator Katherine Lubar. "Infinity had been selecting artists for the past couple of years for a painting website she originally envisioned," Katherine told me. "That didn't come to fruition so she decided to do some shows instead and already had this database of artists. I also chose some and we pooled together what we had. When we looked at the space we realised our original twenty-six should be pared down to ten. We each made our own list and came up with exactly the same ten."
The first in a series of shows to be curated by Infinity Bunce and Katherine Lubar, its title 'Dorian Gray' obviously comes from Oscar Wilde's novel in which the cruel and youthful protagonist
watches his own portrait grow old and wizened - Dorian retains his youthful innocent visage but
gains a hefty dose of paranoia. In visual art terms, the novel highlights the process of painting
and the stories that lie beneath it - all the artists for this show are particularly involved with the process of painting.
Wilde suggested that a painting could take on a life of its own and become a "thing in itself" out-
side of the processes and methods by which it was created. Shane Bradford's incredible 'books' certainly seem to have a life of their own - his paintings are actual modified books about
painting - ('Modern Painting' and Cooper's 'Frank Stella 1958') - painted with luscious high-gloss blocks and stripes. The bottom of the paintings/books form the ceiling for numerous deeply
satisfying stalactites. Each stalactite is a continuation of the painting, and each looks good
enough to break off and eat.
"The paint flows off Shane's books as if the material is speaking out to us in visual dialogue of
its own being", say the curators. "We were looking for work that pushed the boundaries of
painting, that had an individual, independent voice, that wasn't necessarily what was 'trendy'
in the London art world but what we thought was really good painting, painting that we visually responded to in a strong way."
It's not a show that is concerned with the figurative or the abstract - it's a look at the methods
of painting itself. Nick Dawes' household-gloss-on-MDF traffic signs are carefully painted
graphic images but they leak out of themselves; he employed a system of self-imposed rules
to navigate and structure the activity of painting. "I thought that if the construction of the work
was about a denial of choice then what was left out was as important as what was left in.
Choosing to ignore the endless variety of the colour chart, and remaining neutral and objective towards the subject, I decided to concentrate on familiar objects that would specifically delineate
and control my decisions as a painter." It's all about reducing painting down to its basic
component parts.
Infinity Bunce layers up images of a bling-obsessed society with gloss paint on top of eggshell;
Ben Cove puts his painting of a nineteen-fifties dream house onto wheels, of all things. This "to emphasise the process of making either by the construction of objects produced to perform
particular tasks, or by setting up working methodologies that seek ambitious outcomes." I think
he means that the painting becomes a sculpture too.
The work of Andy Harper stands out - a big fertile painting of a thousand intertwined caterpillars, leaves, butterflies and flowers. He notes that "the function, classification and transportation of
plants, reveals numerous political connotations. Representations of plants are obviously not
exempt from such readings", and asks "how might the composition, organisation or construction
of an image question our cultural ordering of nature?" Whatever the answer may be, he's making paintings of deep and fantastical utopian jungles that you'd be happy to have hanging around. - Laura K Jones

The Afterparty of the Dorian Gray show with DJ Franko B
will be held at The Owl and Pussycat from 9pm
on Thursday 14 June 2007

Juno Doran, Geraldine Gliubislavich and Natalie Dowse are featured in
the Axisweb online curated selection.

"Yee Haw!" Review in this weeks Time Out (April 4 -10 2007)
by Martin Coomer :

We are pleased to announce that James Unsworths'
work : ' Meeting at Calder Gate' is chosen
to be this Months poster.
You can find the poster in the packs untill the end of March.
Check the website for all the
distribution addresses.

JAMES UNSWORTH

Vegas Gallery will be the first in the UK to show
Mario Mentrup's film : Stadt des Lichts –City Of Light
The film will be shown during the exhibition 'Yee Haw!'
from 23 march - 22 april 2007 at the Vegas Gallery.

“Stadt des Lichts” is described as a “no budget, sci-fi western
filmed in Berlin”. This 60 minute quasi-narrative film by Mario Mentrup
and Volker Sattel is as fascinating for its production process as it is
for its content. Produced on very little money, the filmmakers managed
to call in favours, persuade friends and generally harangue
the cool kids of Berlin’s electropop scene to help them realize their vision.

The result is that we get to see Peaches making her debut
as Billy the Willie, a dubious sheriff whilst the rest of the cast includes
the likes of Bennet Togler and Angie Reed to name but two,
with a soundtrack by Patrick Catani.

“Stadt des Lichts” was the first extended film collaboration and
has been shown in numerous festivals and theatre and screening
venues in Germany and was included in the “Ipod Killed the
Videostar” project at MAMA, Rotterdam. Their new work,
“I Do Adore” will be included as a special installation version
in the “Double A-side” project at ARTIS, the Centre for Fine Art
and ‘s Hertogenbosch Stedelijk Museum later this year.

Vegas Gallery is happy to confirm their collaboration
with curator Ken Pratt for
future exhibitions.

Vegas Gallery is pleased to announce that
Géraldine Gliubislavich is chosen to be
The Emerging Artist of the week
on the Saatchi Gallery website blog.
See the website article here

EMERGING ARTIST OF THE WEEK: GERALDINE GLIUBISLAVICH AT
THE VEGAS GALLERY, LONDON

"Last week a new gallery opened on Redchurch Street in Spitalfields, joining Museum 52,
studio 1.1 and Trolley in making this a 'destination' street on the London East End art circuit.
The Vegas Gallery, run by Suzanne Schurgers, a former student of the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, aims to show the work of young artists, often recently graduated, who haven't exhibited their work before in London.
The artist Schurgers has selected to launch the new space is Geraldine Gliubislavich who was
born in 1978 and graduated from Central Saint Martin's School of Art (Byam Shaw) in 2006 with a Postgraduate Diploma in Fine Art. Before coming to London Gliubislavich was a student at the
Ecole Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Strasbourg where her degree show attracted a special mention from the examiners.
Her show at the Vegas Gallery presents 15 canvases exhibited amidst a makeshift installation of empty cardboard boxes, freshly painted white canvases, wooden stretcher bars and one painting turned in towards the wall. Gliubislavich's paintings often begin with a photograph of a distinct
image which the artist then 'contaminates' with paint, creating a pictorial dimension that lies somewhere between reality and the imagination - 'the afterworld' of the exhibition's title. Her work hints at narrative and the figurative, as does the installation, whilst also creating abstract texture which remains deliberately vague. The paintings appear to depict scenes of desolation, unrest
and loneliness, which are counter-balanced by Gliubislavich's seductive use of paint, the way she plays with zones of texture and brightness. The apparently random arrangement of canvases and boxes and her palette of smokey grey, black, muddy brown and white take the eye back and forth from one painting to the next, surveying the constellation of objects on view. Gliubislavich cites the writing of Umberto Eco as an inspiration behind this system of open-ended interconnections. In his book "Open Work" (1962), Eco attempts to demonstrate that a work of art is an ambiguous
message, open to an infinity of interpretations. A text - and, for Gliubislavich, a painting - is not a
finite object, but on the contrary an "open" object that the reader cannot receive passively and
which demands of him an effort of imagination and interpretation. Gliubislavich's work explores
the individual painting as an object, testing the limits of painting and feeding off the fertile relationships which gradually evolve as each subsequent painting joins those that preceed it." Rebecca Wilson

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Géraldine Gliubislavichs' show The Afterworld will be
extended for one extra week.
The last day to visit the show athe The Vegas Gallery
will be Sunday 11 February.

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We are so proud to confirm that Géraldine Gliubislavich
will be having her first solo show at the Vegas Gallery soon.
Her work can be viewed from 26 January untill 4 february 2007.

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Minivegas proudly presents a new addition to their family....
The Vegas Gallery will open its doors on the 30th of November
with a group exhibition of 5 young emerging photographers.

A Showcase of Five Photographers
Thursday 30 November 18.00 - 21.00 (Private View)
Friday 1st December 15.00 - 20.00
Sunday 3rd December 12.00 - 17.00

Symptoms Everywhere

LAURA K JONES ON DORIAN GRAY AT VEGAS GALLERY, LONDON

EMERGING ARTIST OF THE WEEK: GERALDINE GLIUBISLAVICH AT THE VEGAS GALLERY, LONDON

EMERGING ARTIST OF THE WEEK: GERALDINE GLIUBISLAVICH AT
THE VEGAS GALLERY, LONDON