‘SUNFLOWERS’ New work by Noel Clueit, 26th June 7 – 9pm

NOEL CLUEIT
SUNFLOWERS

Preview: 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM, Friday 26th June 2009

SATELLITE
61 Thornton Street
Newcastle Upon Tyne
NE1 4AW
United Kingdom

10:30 AM – 6:00 PM, Monday to Saturday

For the 3rd exhibition at SATELLITE we are delighted to present Sunflowers a new video work by Noel Clueit.

Sunflowers sees Clueit take on a “Van Gogh Color Workroom” booth at a shopping centre in Preston. Clueit enters the suped-up passport photo booth and follows the instructions, narrated in a hybrid international american accent generated by the machine; encouraging him to have his own portrait painted in any 4 of Van Gogh’s wide ranging styles. At the crucial point Clueit unveils a Van Gogh publication purchased from the nearby discount bookstore and holds up an image of “Sunflowers” Van Gogh’s iconic painting and perhaps the most reproduced artwork in history. The machine then diligently interprets the image, whilst entertaining Clueit with elevator style ‘musak’, eventually presenting Clueit with the finished work: a reproduction made from a photograph taken of a reproduction published in a book about one of the most famous paintings of all time.

“…I think it is the repetition that is key to the work, from one repro of a repro etc, totally devalued image that is nothing more than an icon used to decorate kitchen untensils etc …how cras it has become from the purity of the original. Which I still think is a shit painting really but I guess nobody else thinks about its merits as a painting now.”

Noel Clueit 2009

Clueit has transformed SATELLITE into a blackout video projection that both echo’s the intimacy of the “Van Gogh Drawing Studio” and the clarity of a museum scale presentation of artists’ film and video. This knowing manipulation of both the material he is working with and the context within which it is presented is central to Clueit’s practice. Working across media from carefully handcrafted objects, to fabricated texts works, and collaged works on paper; Clueit’s iconic subjects are drawn from all aspects of contemporary culture including architecture, art, design, and mass media, thus challenging his audience to constantly re-consider and re-evaluate the reason and function of the information that surrounds us.

Noel Clueit was born in 1984 in Manchester, UK and currently lives and works in Newcastle upon Tyne having completed a BA in Fine Art at Cumbria Institute of the Arts, Carlisle in 2007. In 2008 he was a prizewinner of Open at Cube Gallery in Manchester and Grundy Art Gallery Blackpool (curated by Juneau Projects). His solo exhibition Lost Wisdom is currently showing at Supercollider Contemporary Art Projects in Blackpool.

SATELLITE is an independent 4 x 3 meter white cube project space for contemporary art situated within Alt Vinyl Record Store in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. Our programme will focus upon solo exhibitions of artists at any stage in their career, located anywhere, who are engaged with current contemporary practice.

www.satellitesatellite.org

To celebrate the opening of SUNFLOWERS Beer and Cakes will be served at The Settle Down Café located at 62 Thornton Street adjacent to Alt Vinyl.