Window cleaning days are over
Group show @ the Empire
20th November – 12th December 2004

Illustration by Duncan Ross, Devil music, 2004

Window Cleaning Days are Over gathers seven artists and collectives from around Europe. Without a specific premise, the exhibition presents new and recent works shown in London for the first time. Some of the artists have responded to the title of the show drawn from a song by emerging London-based sound artist Dan Wilson.

The Empire
33a Wadeson Street
London E2 9DR

Show open: 20th November – 12th December 2004
Gallery opening times: Thursday to Sunday 12-6pm

Bad Beuys Entertainment
Bad Beuys Entertainment is an artist collective founded in 1999 in Cergy-Pontoise (greater Paris). BAD BOYS ENTERTAINMENT is the name of a major American hip-hop label. In BBE, Boys has been replaced by Beuys. The name BBE indicates the group’s point of departure and its frame of reference: if its attitude isn't revolutionary, it is certainly a critical one, targeting the spheres of mass cultural production. For this exhibition, they are presenting two new works. The photograph Sauvageons is a self-portrait, staged at a suburban bus stop. Four models, have been cast to represent the group members wearing track suits at a bus stop. The second piece is described by the collective as “deluxe junk”. The Chinese stuff refers to (industrial) ''tableaux'' one can find in Chinese restaurants or fast-foods. These are light boxes containing a mechanism built to render a kinetic effect, providing the object with a kind of magic. Idyllic scenery, these photomontages - touched up photographs - usually represent exotic landscapes: luxurious nature with azure skies and fertile downs, sometimes with a waterfall.

Recent shows include: FIAC 04; CAC, Meymac (2004, group show); Glassbox, Paris (2004, group show); Galerie Corentin Hamel, Paris (2003, solo show); Confluences, Paris (2002, group show).

Vanessa Billy
Vanessa Billy uses industrial materials from PVC and rubber to steel and glass to conceive sculptures oddly resembling everyday objects. Yet, Billy’s works are vain in that they fail to perform a specific task. Midway, 2004 while evoking the rubber curtain through which the luggage appears at the baggage reclaim, claims a new significance in the gallery environment. Made of brightly coloured PVC and mirror, Other’s people fire sits in the middle of the gallery. It suggests an inner confusion which access is denied by fragments of mirror reflecting the viewer and its surroundings.

Vanessa Billy was born in 1978 in Geneva, Switzerland. She lives and works in London. Recent shows include: The Standpoint Gallery, London (2004, group show), Mad03 Festival (2003, group show); MadridLos29enchufes / Madrid (2003, group show).

Seamus Harahan
Harahan’s video works picture day to day matters and environments. In Il Mercenario, Harahan is documenting a Belfast street scene of a Drunk, who might have trained as a Boxer. Juxtaposing the visual with Western music, the “Boxer” turns into a dancing Cider Cowboy of the urban sprawl. By choosing the elevator for projection the viewer is forced into a 1:1 encounter with Il Mercenario.

Seamus Harahan was born in 1968 in London. He lives and works in Belfast. Recent shows include: Project Arts Centre, Temple Bar, Dublin (2004, solo show); Zé dos bois Gallery, Lisbon (2003, group show); Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast (2004, group show); Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2002, group show). He will be showing at Gimpel Fils from 25th November 2004 to 7th January 2005, and has been selected amongst 13 other artists to participate in the first Northern Irish representation at the 51st Venice Biennial (2005).

Icelandic Love Corporation
Icelandic Love Corporation is an artist collective founded in 1996 in Reykjavik. In their performances, photographs and video works, ILC are reinventing themselves as characters something in between human beings and elves. Based in different parts of Europe, yet influenced by their common heritage, ILC use the gap between critical inquiry and neutralized representation to develop mesmerizing situations and objects.

Recent shows include: Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Belgium (2004, group show; Art Statements, Basel Art Fair, Switzerland (2004); Tanya Bonaktar Gallery, New York (2004, group show); Tent, Rotterdam (2004, group show); Volume, Brooklyn, New York (2004, group show); Zacheta Gallery, Warzaw (2004, group show); Galerie Zink&Gegner, Munich (2003, solo show)

Juneau/projects/
Ban this: the remix is a multimedia installation comprised of prints, a video and an audio element. Initially conceived for the Road Show, 2003 (Grizedale), Ban this consisted of asking people to write their own lyrics and sing their song along tracks composed by juneau/projects/. Ban this: the remix present the remixed version of these songs as well as magnified lyrics sheets by children. The video features Cosmo, an American child performing his song.

Juneau/projects/ is Philip Duckworth, born 1976 in Iselohn, Germany and Ben Sadler, born 1977 in Birmingham.
Recent shows include: The Showroom, London (2004, solo show), fa projects, London (2004, solo show), Romantic Detachment at PS1, New York (2004, group show).

Duncan Ross
Rarely appearing in a gallery context, Ross primarily works in collaboration with other artists, small publishers and arts organisation. For this exhibition, Ross has created three new drawings inspired by Television, his dreams and false memories. His ideas are influenced stylistically by cartoonists like DC Thompson’s Leo Boxendale and Dudley D. Watkins.

Duncan Ross was born in 1974 in Kinross, Fife, Scotland. He lives and works in Belfast.
Recent shows include: Zé dos bois Gallery, Lisbon (2003, group show); Catalyst Arts Belfast (2002, group show); Generator Projects, Dundee (2001, group show). Ross is illustrator of the monthly Vacuum newspaper, Belfast.

Michael Sailstorfer
For Window Cleaning Days are Over, Sailstorfer is presenting two new works. Anna (2004) is a sound installation featuring the encounter between a hairdryer and a microphone. Inspired by Kurt Schwitter’s poem Anna reinterpreted by German Hip-Hop band Freundeskreis in the late 1990’s, Sailstorfer’s performative piece amplifies a familiar domestic noise, lending it an exaggerated importance.
The second piece brought in this show is Window, a steel frame that used to contain a shop sign. Placed outdoors, it works like a window, framing the surroundings.

Michael Sailstorfer was born in 1979 in Vilsbiburg, Germany.
Recent shows include: Zero gallery, Milan, Italy (2004, group show); Attitudes, Genf, Switzerland (2004, solo show); Sydney Biennale, Australia (2004); Manifesta 5, San Sebastian, Spain (2004); Galerie Markus Richter, Berlin (2003, solo show); Ludwig Forum für internationale Kunst, Aachen, Germany (2003, group show). Sailstorfer is currently showing in Bloomberg New Contemporaries, Barbican.

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