Artists Talks Sat 12 October from 2pm
Diogo Duarte & Jessica Mitchell: Sour Puss: The Opera- in conversation. Details below.
Çağatay Tuna Özkan - 40’lar, şunlar, bunlar; birilerine selamlar..(“40, those, these..greetings to whomever”) -Talking about his powerful installation piece referencing war, politics and family. Details below.
Savage Collaboration – Sour Puss: The Opera: In conversation with her co-creators
Diogo Duarte and Jessica Mitchell are an artistic duo who have been collaborating since 2016 on the visual story ‘Sour-Puss: The Opera’. Comprised of photographs by Duarte and drawings by Mitchell, the series tells the sometimes fictional, sometimes emotionally biographical story of a woman grappling with her own sexuality and sense of self. It was born out of the unlikely friendship between the two collaborators - 32-year-old photographer Diogo Duarte and 53-year-old psychotherapist Jessica Mitchell.
The ’Sour-Puss’ is a character based on real-life Jessica and real-life Diogo, resulting in a composite of both collaborators’ life experiences. With its nihilistic undertones, a sour looking woman seems to be consumed within her own private rituals and absorbed in the contemplation of her own body, so much so that sometimes it’s as though she fails to imagine anything exists outside herself. In the series, ‘Sour-Puss’ borrows Jessica’s body and face to take us on a literal and metaphorical journey that is fundamentally marked by shaming, isolation, staining and an absurdist search for meaning, connection and freedom.
How does one make a baby without sex? What makes two very different people come together to collaborate in creating a character that exposes aspects of themselves that they are often desperate to hide? What makes a middle aged woman take up art and pose naked for a young, male photographer? Why continue collaborating when it seems like the process might destroy your friendship? Who wants to focus on emotions like shame and melancholy in these days of positive thinking.
Find out…
Çağatay Tuna Özkan - 40’lar, şunlar, bunlar; birilerine selamlar..(“40, those, these..greetings to whomever”)
40, those, these..greetings to whomever” is an installation piece which has evolved during a questioning process of the act of writing messages on ammunitions and its relation to the need of ‘self-transcendence’ in extraordinary situations. For the piece itself covers it by referring to controversial militaristic traditions, rituals, and myths from Middle East, he had to find other ways to conceptualize the subject matter. Newcastle based Turkish artist Cagatay Tuna Ozkan will discuss how his work has evolved and the methods he used to play with serious topics such as justification of violence in modern tribalism.