Dorotea Etzler is a video artist from Berlin. Dual projections of her video series BlumenFotoFilm were projected in the gallery from Friday through till Sunday. Achromat hopes to work again with Etzler in 2010, projecting her epic series somewhere in the centre of Brighton.

August 2009

Achromat Presents
“Mutant Reissue”
An exhibition of silk-screen prints by Billy A.B

Billy A.B has constructed new pictures by rearranging drawings found in books and magazines, digitally adding fresh hues, and reprinting them by hand using silk-screens.
The resulting series of prints are at once composite and vital, alien and familiar, vintage and newfangled.

The following is an interview between Achromat’s Sam Ratcliffe and Billy A.B:

ACHROMAT: What would a Billy A.B utopia look like?
BILLY: There would be a lot of cacti. Weather would be on remote control. Um, giant floating R-Kelly Heads, like out of Zardos*, would be there to guide you around and bring you foods and stuff. There would be a lot of patterns everywhere, and a lot of surfaces.

ACHROMAT: Are you interested in the proliferation of images?
BILLY: Yeah definitely. Doesn’t that some up the media-driven world we live in, in a way? Globalisation!? How do you react to constant stimulation? It’s like that bit in the Matrix where Neo learns kung fu, but instead of kung fu we are learning… absolute bullshit?!? They don’t call it “The Golden Age of Nothing” for nothing. But you have to see the funny side, and the potential. I mean, I think that’s a very interesting idea, what influences people’s art, I like to think of my artwork kind of as a virus spreading across the Matrix, the Matrix is reality and the virus is love. But seriously, I like to put together things in an almost random way, just collecting stuff and re-arranging it playfully, adding some of myself. Not really trying to make a point, just make something for fun. I want it to be meaningless in a way. I think that, that is utopia in a way, freedom to be as whimsical and pointless as you want, not trying too hard to construct meaning out of inevitable chaos. Let the TV adverts trick you into believing you are immortal.

ACHROMAT: A lot of your work looks like emblems or logos. Are you poking fun at singular, culturally authentic and iconic imagery?
BILLY: Hmm, maybe a little bit, but I want to do both, I want to pay homage to it at the same time. There’s something beautiful about it, like logos and stuff, adverts and stuff, kind of like aboriginal totems and religious stuff and stuff, it speaks to you on a spiritual level. Just instead of saying “women are fertile” or whatever, it is saying buy some Coca Cola. So I guess I’m subverting it so it says… something else.

ACHROMAT: Do you find any similarities between the life of a parasitic Tapeworm and the production process of Tagliatelle?
BILLY: Oh, that’s a deep one. A tapeworm is never going to be a noodle. You can pay for school, but you can’t buy class.

ACHROMAT: If you were to work with Anish Kapoor what do you think the end product would look like?
BILLY: It would be a (sub)post-tribal-ontological-pataphysical-transbehaviourist-quasi-scientific-chronomatic-neo-maxi-zoom-dweebie video of me beating up Anish Kapoor on Youtube.

ACHROMAT: What does Pangcake mean?
BILLY: It’s like a pancake but it has a G in it.

ACHROMAT: Is your work impossible?
BILLY: I think Adidas summed it up well when she said “Impossible is nothing.”

Simon Davenport installs a smoke machine, hides fart bombs on the gallery floor, makes a strange fire like arrangement of sticks with a jacket plonked on top and sets off smoke bombs behind a giant poster print of Susan Sontag’s Against Interpretation.

June 2009

Ryan Styles comes to Achromat with his new light based performances. You can see more from Ryan Styles at http://www.ryanstyles.com, watch his movie below, edited by Achromat for ‘Ryan Styles Loves Light’. Each film was made on webcam after returning from yet another performance in the early hours of a London morning.

Ryan Styles Loves Light from Achromat Gallery on Vimeo.

The following are photographs Ryan’s performance in the gallery:

Rachel Overfield

Sam Ratcliffe

Rebecca Roscorla

Tristan Stevens

Robin Tarbet

Jemma Watts

MAY 2009

Achromat Party @ The Loft
Visuals by Video Artist Fiona Geilinger
http://www.geilinger.com

Gallery launch with work by Rachel Overfield, Sam Ratcliffe, Rebecca Roscorla, Tristan Stevens, Robin Tarbet, Eva Voutsaki and Jemma Watts. Robert Lye’s ‘The Only Measure of Time was the Beating in Your Chest’ opened in the project space.

The Gallery Space

Tristan Stevens marveling at Robin Tarbet’s sculptures

People

Robert Lyes ‘The Only Measure of Time was the Beating in your Chest’

People were welcome to take press releases and reviews written prior to the work being fully realised

The flyer from XYZ magazine for our party