NEW WORK, by Candida Powell-Williams and Thomas Yeomans

Exposed Arts Projects is proud to announce NEW WORK by artists Candida Powell-Williams and Thomas Yeomans: a collaborative project in decrypting and encrypting anew; a manifestation of friendship as an unchosen artistic strategy; and a magical riddle that can be solved in (at least) two ways – resulting in (at least) two different routes through the exhibition.  

The methods, applied in creating NEW WORK, enact two distinct logics of encrypting, mastered by artists Candida Powell-Williams and Thomas Yeomans – in a spiritual proximity to one another, enabled by their long-term friendship. The first logic, developed by Powell-Williams, recognises meanings in echoes and repetitions. It enables the artist to identify recurring symbols in the familiar systems of codes, move them around in a meditative pace and juxtapose them anew – gently yet firmly reprogramming the original narratives they belong to. Approaching art practice primarily from a philosophical angle, the artist is interested in confronting the history of our attempts to navigate the absurdity of the world with the help of mysticism and myth-making: in the past, as much as in the present. It is the humankind's disharmony with the Universe – the recurring conflicts and contradictions; the reproduction of comforting yet fake dualities (such as order/chaos, meaning/nonsense, control and power) – that Powell-Williams interrogates and makes visible through her work. The second logic – advanced by Yeomans – manifests itself in a vivid language of undercover persuasion. It operates as the multiplicity of hidden invocation threads – alike those found in advertisement, political campaigns and sport. The agency of invocations here relies on the particular grouping of symbols, images and words that affect human-beings on extra-conscious levels. While these can be effectively used for a “good” or “evil” cause, as enactments of white or black magic – they appear as neutral in principle: it is therefore up to the one who authors to decide how to “charge” them. This essentially dualistic nature of invocations is critical to Yeomans, who himself chooses to approach magic as a good positive force – that is capable of “rewriting” the world into a happier place. Once the crypto-logics utilised by Powell-Williams and Yeomans are applied simultaneously, the unprecedented system of meanings comes into being. The outcome of this amalgamation, NEW WORK operates as a magical offering that enacts the new readings of ancient all-too-familiar symbols, conducted by Yeomans and Powell-Williams.

Candida Powell-Williams graduated from the Royal College of Art, London in 2011 and the Slade School of Fine Art London in 2009. Her sculptural and performance works are a response to researching the slippage that occurs between primary and secondary source material, exploring the consequences of retelling history and how we construct identity through objects and memory. She is currently Artist in Residence at The Warburg Institute London. Selected exhibitions include: Lessness, still quorum, performance, Serpentine Galleries, London (2018); Boredom and its Acid Touch, Frieze Live, London (2017); Tongue Town, Museum of Modern Art, São Paulo (2017); Cache, Art Night Associate Programme, London (2017); Vernacular History of the Golden Rhubarb, Bosse and Baum Gallery, London (2017); PIC performance festival, Melbourne, Australia (2016); Coade’s Elixir-an occupation, Hayward Gallery, London (2014). In 2013 Powell-Williams was awarded the Sainsbury Scholarship at the British School at Rome.

Thomas Yeomans is a London-based artist working in video and CGI animation. Since graduating the RCA in 2012 he has exhibited extensively across the UK and Europe with recent exhibitions including:Intel Inside, Centre for Investigative Journalism, Goldsmiths University, London (2018);Coronation, Horse and Pony Fine Arts, Berlin (2017); This is about you, Project Native Informant, London (2017); Artists' Moving Image Screening, Exeter Contemporary Open, Exeter Phoenix, Exeter (2016); Art Herning, Galleri KANT, Herning (2015); 30 years of the future, Castlefield Gallery, Manchester (2014). His research looks at online communities and the way in which visual culture is produced, consumed and shared. Recent research has drawn a focus on the co-opting and appropriation of occultism amongst extreme right wing groups and looking into how a defiantly queer and leftist retaliation can be put forward.