A poor weed,
unwanted straggle tufted
with unlovely yellow,
persists between paving stones
marginal to the grid
bearded face turned toward the light

    
             Thom Gunn  (Outside the Diner)

 

 

The Man with Night Sweats is inspired by the energy generated within the bourgeoning gay/queer cultures that emerged out of the changing political and social landscapes of the 1960s and 70s. It includes works made in the last 10 years that emphasise how this energy persists and transforms amid the constant change of recent histories.  It features artists Steve Farrer, Neil Haas, Dietmar Lutz, Mike Silva and Jack Pierson.

 

Through looking at how a particular aesthetic sensibility became reconstructed/reordered as a response to the trauma of the AIDS crisis in the early 1980s, the exhibition brings together works that embody the  perspective of a life lived on the peripheries, and yet, which are also expansive and generous in their intentions. We propose that new and influential gay/queer creativities emerged from this era with less emphasis on polemic, exploiting instead a more subtle, codified approach to making images.

 

The Man with Night Sweats is curated by Christopher Owen and David Rhodes. 

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Christopher Owen is an artist originally from Birmingham. He studied at both Goldsmiths and St Martins and currently lives in Brighton.

 

David Rhodes was born in London in 1968. He graduated from Goldsmiths in 1999 and lives and works in St Leonards on Sea. Now an independent curator, David has previously worked at the British Museum, The National Gallery and the De La Warr Pavilion where he organised exhibitions and commissioned new works with artists including Tomoko Takahasi, Cerith Wyn Evans and Shaun Gladwell. In 2011 he organised the largest Andy Warhol exhibition in the UK outside of London and Edinburgh.

 

Jack Pierson was born in 1960 in Plymouth, Massachusetts, and graduated from the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston in 1984. He lives and works in New York. Pierson has had recent solo exhibitions at Aspen Art Museum, Colorado, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac – Pantin, Paris, CAC, Malaga and the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin. His work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Soloman R. Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among other museums worldwide. Pierson is represented by Cheim & Read, New York.

 

Neil Haas was born in 1971 in South Shields and graduated in 2014 with an MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art. He lives and works in London. Recent exhibitions include; Spunky Clipper, Almanac, London (2017), Maybe your lens is scratched, The Averard Hotel, Slate Projects, London (2016), Not Really Really, Frédéric de Goldschmidt collection, Quai du Commerce, Brussels (2016) and Folly, Emalin, Stirling, Scotland (2016).

 

Mike Silva, born in Sweden in 1970, lives and works in London. He graduated from the Royal College of Art in 1994 and was included in the 1995 New Contemporaries. Silva has held solo shows at David Risley Gallery, Copenhagen; The Charlie Dutton Gallery, London; Galerie Barbara Thumm, Berlin (2001/2000); Anthony Wilkinson Gallery, London (2004/2002/1998/1995); Galeri Bouhlou, Norway (2002) and Stephen Friedman Gallery, London (1996). He has been included in a number of group shows including Lombard Freid, New York, Barbara Gillman Gallery, Miami and Victoria Miro Gallery, London. His work is in a number of collections including: British Council, British Airways, Government Art Collection, Simmons & Simmons and the Saatchi Collection.

 

Dietmar Lutz graduated in 1997 from Kunstakademie, Düsseldorf, Germany. Recent solo shows include; Alessandro Raho & Dietmar Lutz, CENTER, Berlin, Germany (2011), Documenta (in collaboration with Kota Ezawa, ARQUEBUSE, Geneva (2008), Tabu, Taché-Lévy Gallery, Brussels, Belgium (2006), and Querelle, Emily Tsingou Gallery, London (2005). Group shows include; Mental Diary, Kunstverein Hannover, (2015), Painting Show, Eastside Projects, Birmingham (2012), Sexy Boyfriend, JB Jurve, Los Angeles, USA (2012), Der Letze macht das Licht aus, Freies Museum, Berlin (2011), and Dirty Pictures, The Approach, London (2003). His work is in a number of collections, including: Los Angeles County Museum, Seattle Art Museum, Francois Pinault Foundation for Contemporary Art, Deutsche Bank and the Woo Collection. Dietmar is the founding member of artists’ group hobbypopMUSEUM.

 

Steve Farrer was born in 1951 and studied at North East London Polytechnic and the Royal College of Art, London. He was London Filmmakers’ Co-op workshop organiser and cinema organiser in the late 1970s. Farrer’s work was included in the film programme A Century of Artist’ Film in Britain at Tate (2004) and is in The LUX Collection. Farrer recently had a solo show at the De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill (2016) and showed work at Tate Live: Expanded Cinema, Tate Modern, London (2009).