Stop the Chaos Turn the Page
12.03.25 - 28.04.25
The Art House
Stop the Chaos, Turn the Page
Division of Labour
Angelina May Davis, Ruth Ewan, Lewis Graham, Dean Kenning, Matthew Cornford & John Beck - The Art School Project
Daniel Pryde-Jarman, Lulu Ao, Isaac JordanStop the Chaos, Turn the Page is an exhibition about education and the rise of the alternative art school. This is the second of three exhibitions from Division of Labour centred on education, the first exhibition was entitled Education, Education, Education which took place in Bethnal Green in 2017, the exhibition featured Simon & Tom Bloor, Matthew Cornford, Fay Nicolson, Hassan Sharif and looked at art education through the lens of New Labour, featuring works that referenced a time before,at the crossroads and a critique of pedogody and neo-liberalism.
This exhibition is a continuation, working with artists with an interest in art education in whose work is embedded in the ideas of learning and pedagogy. What happens if we look to art schools as cultural centres of communities? Is protest and activism missing from art education? How has art education been canonised, what are the histories that make up the UK model? An finally why are students looking for independent alternatives?
Stop the Choas, Turn the Page is taken from the 2023 Labour manifesto before coming to power on page 9. chapter 4.
Dean Kenning / Building the Fetish (2015)
Building the Fetish was a research project and ten hour public art event on Granary Square to map the ‘value’ of the multi-billion pound 67 acre private development north of Kings Cross and St Pancras railway stations. It was made in collaboration with Jim Bicknell-Knight, Cecelia Johnson, Sidney Smith, Aly Williamson and Eliza Wimperis – BA Fine Art students at Central Saint Martins. Mixing clay with earth dug from one of the nearby building sites we constructed a three-dimensional schematic diagram of the development
on top of a plinth. Referring passers-by to an informational map pasted on the surface of the plinth (see archival photographs on display) we explained that the relative heights of the lumpy mud towers corresponded to annual estimates of the ‘value’ producing power of the buildings and sites they represented - offices, retail units, apartments, restaurants, parks and squares, an art college, a hotel, student accommodation and public amenities.
The higher the tower, the larger the economic value. Throughout the day workers, residents and users of the square discussed and debated specific effects of the development and the wider social, cultural and political issues the work raised about ‘value’ as well as the private investor regeneration model adopted by Camden Council.
After completion the ‘fetish’ was left standing in the square until dusk, when it was torn down, and the muddied stone paving washed clean.
THE ART SCHOOL PROJECT / Demolished Art Schools (2019-ongoing)
1/5 framed photographs -
This series of photographs and captions is from The Art School Project; John Beck and Matthew Cornford have set themselves an ambitious task of identifying, researching, and documenting all the art schools across the country. In this exhibition they present a photographic survey of five schools which no longer exist.
Angelina May Davis / Shipshape (2014)
Oil on canvas, 157x125cm
Angelina May Davis teaches Foundation Art & Design at Halesowen College and during the pandemic she took up a correspondence course at Turps Banana (2020-2021) from where she is now enjoying a renaissance in her work. Shipshape, a relic of an idiom, her most recent work explores Englishness through growing up in, and at the advent of, the Post- Modernist epoch of the 1970’s. Davis’ works addresses and how old systems have lost their shipshape-ness, there shine, how stiff upper lips wobbled in the aging Victorian classrooms, and how hierarchies measured by serious culture where challenged by Punk, TV, cartoons and comics, which spoke more about the in-touch changing of the guard. Davis’ work are both exterior views fabricated scenes, set and repainted in the interior of both her studio and her lived experience as an educator and artist haunted by lost and questionable ideas of Englishness.
Vincent Hawkins / HOME, Learning (2021)
Oil on canvas, 51.5 x 41cm
The title HOME, Learning is separated with a comma. Home is in full caps. And so, we read the title at once as a system of education, that is home learning as in staying at home, an auto-didactic approach or one driven on by parental teachers. And yet this title talks about home and learning separately, perhaps learning as an idea of personal growth, and HOME as something isolated surrounded by a goldy looking frame. Hawkins’ delicate and quiet painting of an inland with a tree and diving figures, within a micro frame made during the pandemic. Vincent Hawkins studied at is a studio holder at TKE Tracy Emin Foundation.
Ruth Ewan / Punishment Exercise, (2021)
Letterpress poster produced by Ruth Kirkby. Edition of 30.
This letterpress poster edition quotes untrained school teacher Muriel Pyrah of Asking Out, quoting Mark Twain. Pyrah’s own handwritten teaching notes repeatedly reference this quote and this idea is reflected in the title. A punishment exercise is a traditional form of written punishment at secondary school where pupils were asked to copy out the same line repeatedly. For further information on prints and editions please contact Rob Tufnell.
Lewis Graham graduated Worcester University Fine Art in 2023 and secured funding to pursue the correspondence course at Turps Banana. Specialising in Plein Air and Landscape painting. Blakedown (2023) is an early work from Graham’s recent and burgeoning practice, Graham is interested in place and currently one particular location; The Clent Hills and the surrounding area on the edge of the West Midlands conurbation. Clent and Black Country folklore is for Graham what Cookham is for Stanley Spenser or Northampton is for Alan Moore. His work admires the self-didactic sub-culture of the un-institutionalised Plein-Air painters and their skills following YouTube tutorials and through swapping tricks and ‘Paint station set-ups’ competing generously online on forums and in social media. Where does an academic Bachelor, or a Master of Fine Arts compare, or an independent finishing school sit in the free art world of the plein-air painter? Free from the studio, free from the gallery, free from the Art School; autonomy, fresh air and broad horizons.?
The Gatherers was made in Italy, a culmination of study with the Apollo Painting School; a non-profit organisation founded in 2023 by artist Louise Giovanelli, gallerist & curator Alice Amati and artist & academic Dr. Ian Hartshorne. Jordon’s Gathering depicts a group of people coming together, suggestive of religious gatherings, a political parley, friends meet-ups or even group critiques.
Sam Curtis / Selfie circa 1998 Photomontage made at Hereford College of Art Foundation course.
Sam Curtis’ work is about self-initiated art projects, art schools and DIY art-cultures. Working as both and artist and curator Curtis employs ‘established’ roles; Artist in Residence, Art expert, Trade professionalism in his art practice.
Josie Flynn / Graduation (1998) Photograph, mock-guilt frame
Josie Flynn’s, now legendary, graduation photograph was taken upon her graduation in 1998 and was featured in New Contemporaries 2009
Bauhaus Staff Room (2017) Ned James ©
Printed dartboard, dartboard scoring cabinet, darts, darts box and flights, chalk (white & purple) 620x620mm
A version of the Bauhaus education model was adopted by British art school Foundation courses, students would follow a series of weekly disciplines in sculpture, print, painting, illustration and graphic design before choosing their specialism in the second term after Christmas. Here in Bauhaus Staff Room we students can choose their destiny with the simple throw of a dart.
Lulu Ao / Watercourse (2023)
Animation (03:50)
With a focus on text art since the mid-1960s, Lulu Ao’s research draws upon the theories of the pioneer British group Art & Language who were renowned for the radical and at times controversial action research in art and education at Coventry University. Lulu works with the Contemporary Art Academy, an online correspondence art school directed by Zavier Ellis and Matthew Gibson. Watercourse is an animation where language flows like water. Inspired by moments of introspection in the shower, Lulu reimagines water as a stream of consciousness, each droplet a fragment of individual thought. In the animation, deconstructed Chinese characters fall from a showerhead, drift down the drain, merge into the river, and ultimately reach the boundless ocean of shared human knowledge. Each fragment represents a unique consciousness, an autonomous perspective. Here, language is not merely a tool for communication but a complex structure that shapes consciousness and mediates our connection with the world and each other.
Saulius Leonavicius / 220 Litu. (2010)
Easel (replica) 220 Watercolour, ink drawings (ongoing) on A4 sketchbook paper
(As above) 220 Litu features a painting support structure as subject. When starting an art course at Vilnius Academy in 2008, Saulius saw an advertisement for an easel pinned to the student notice board, “Easel for Sale 220 Litu”. He removed the notice and bought the easel. He never used the easel. Later Saulius was invited to take part in Vilnius 2nd International Art Fair in 2010, he proposed to re-sell the Easel for the same price using the original advertisement. The easel was positioned facing a white wall where, at the centre the original advert was pinned to the wall. Artists, collectors, curators, and fair visitors were invited to copy the easel advertisement in inks and paint on paper using the easel.
Daniel Pryde-Jarman /
Donkey Work (2024)
Wood, screws, glue, sizes variable
Daniel Pryde-Jarman is an artist-curator and educator who teaches Fine Art at Hereford College of Art, one of the very few independent art schools left in the UK. Daniel presents Donkey Work an artist made studio donkey with a canvas’ by selected artists curated by Daniel Pryde-Jarman and Nat Pitt. This work is one of two works in the exhibition which feature an artist easel as subject (see 220 Litu by Saulius Leonavicius). Donkey Work and 72Lt are both a self-referencing meta-works. Donkey Work is hand-made by the artist. It is simultaneously a sculpture and a method for production and a method for display.