V22 ASHWINSTREET

MIKE HARTE - MAKE ART

V22 has commissioned its first artwork for the V22 Collection by artist Jamie Shovlin. Mike Harte – Make Art is an archival work that acts as both a portrait of its eponymous creator and an accidental collaboration between two friends.

Mike Harte – Make Art began as a scrapbook of one-way correspondence mailed to Shovlin from Mike Harte, a fellow student at Loughborough University, over a year beginning in 2001. The miscellaneous contents of each of the 36 letters Mike sent have been developed into 115 colour-coded wall panels, becoming one of the few works apparently ever made by the notoriously work-shy Mike Harte.

Mimicking the activities of the armchair curator and drawing on the long and dusty tradition of Mail Art, Shovlin arranges Mike’s clippings into apparent cohesion, carefully arranging each letters’ contents into 36 distinct chapters despite being largely ignorant of any intended meaning and significance.

What emerges from this re-framing of one man’s obsessive collecting of miscellany and trivia is both an intimate double portrait of both Mike and Shovlin, and the revelation of the weird and wonderful culture-at-large - supplements of the Guardian, pages torn from local rags, The Sun’s “Sun Spot” series - that provide Mike with his material.

Of course with Shovlin, one begins to question the reality of at least one of the protagonists, possibly both?

Truant Creativity in the ‘Work’ of Mike Harte…and Brendan Fahy - Essay by Sean Ashton (PDF)

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THE PORTRAIT

Artists:

Annie Kevans, Boo Ritson, Claire Pestaille, Cormet Lafarge, Douglas Lamond, Erica Eyres, Fernando Marques Penteado, Harland Miller, James Wright, Joel Croxson, Mandy Ure, Marcus Harvey, Nadia Hebson, Peter Kennard, Rachel Bradley, Sam Dargen, Sarah Dobai, Sarah Scarsbrook, Sarah Taylor, Tara Cranswick, Yael Schmidt

Click here for Artist Writing (PDF)

"Typically the notion of the portrait is concerned with representation and recognition of a person. This exhibition develops the idea of the portrait and allows for an expansive divergence from the considered norm. A migration from the usual formal component parts which ordinarily combine to resemble and create the portrait.

The pervading idea that weaves throughout is the notion of revelation. To make an attributed discovery and to then display the unearthed object is the constant pre-occupation of the portrait. It discovers, fortifies, embodies and behaves as a mediator between reality and fiction. Within the portrait there are multiple minute and contravening conversations between the subject, artist and audience.

The inert fascination and instinctual utilisation of the human form is as much a contemporary vehicle for the expression of identity as it has been historically. A constant source of provocation is provided in the act of observing our counterparts. Traditionally, the portrait is known as a means to determine ideologies such as wealth, status, style and ultimate realism. In a contemporary context the portrait has the ability to dismantle, develop and reconstruct the preconceived interpretations of the other. Whether the portraitist infers realism or relies upon actual depiction they are inquisitors; storytellers who interface with, contextualise and record the idiosyncrasies of existence. "

Sarah Scarsbrook, October 2006