A BREXIT NO I MEAN
A BREAK UP (2019)
Ellen Angus' solo show A Brexit, No I mean a Break Up takes us on a journey through the dissolution of a human relationship embedded in the uncertainty of a Brexit universe.
Her performances, video works and paintings are displayed between two rooms; one Red and one Blue. She uses these spaces to depict contrasting and heightened behaviours associated with the psychology of uncertainty and longing
Växjö Konstallen
Utställningen pågår till och med den 19 maj 2019.
A Break Up No I Mean A Brexit
Who wants to be perceived as a witch that picks
wounds or the dog that digs up the lawn?
Ellen Angus’ exhibition is a display of the failures of our modern world where she takes the role of the witch, the dog, the fool, the artist, the one who dares to discuss topics that we normally learn to repress the facts or fail to deal with.
Through video works, paintings, installations and performance she is the messenger delivering a message that a good citizen (Brit?) might think is both too personal and intimidating to receive.
Coping with powerlessness, desperation, separation, loss, the end of something. When one feels small, ridiculous and helpless, as a tiny dot on a piece of foam, depicting an aubergine floating in the universe. Because we are exposed and fragile when confirming a breakup, there is no longer “us”. Reformulating this desperation into the frames of contemporary politics, when a political decision is made, that Brexit is happening, because Britain voted, valorising radicalism and alienation.
The exhibition consists of two spaces, a blue and a red room. The visitors meet a big brain painting and a poetic video in the blue space. Then we are led into the red room. Light, transparent, plastic hanging from the ceiling, the space accommodates various paintings, sculptures, video and a 20 hours performance during the opening. The artist lets us into her safe zone, presenting her cooping tools and rituals; challenging her own physical boundaries by dancing and singing to the same song until she can’t any more, competing with a video of herself, questioning national heritage by faking paintings from Joseph Mallord William Turner, locking and sealing her paintings into custom-made heavy metal frames. All attempts to regain the lost control and decay before she rises again.
A Brexit, No I Mean a Breakup is not only hovering around these topics. Angus takes it a step further and provides remedies to these heartbreaks, our culture would rather neglect and sweep it under the rug.
We love, to be loved.
Weakened social bonds makes it difficult to engage, accept and look after each other. Neoliberalism insists that we are only responsible for our own happiness, therefore we learn to keep calm and carry on. It will all settle if we just work hard enough. These mockeries, sold as norms, are contributing to individualism, alienation and separation.
A Brexit, No I Mean a Breakup is an exhibition where the personal becomes political and vice versa. By sharing her story, Angus reminds us of simultaneously
of our powerlessness as well as ways of strategies of resistance and creates a meeting point where we can share, stare at each other, talk about breakups, politics and loss.
‘Muffled throughout their history, they have lived in dreams, in bodies
(though muted), in silences, in aphonic revolts.’
