Everyone else is a robot- Richard Ibghy & Marilou Lemmens

Friday, April 19, 2013 to Friday, May 24, 2013

Opening Reception: Friday, April 19th, 2013, 7:00- 10:00 PM Duration: Friday, April 19, 2013 – Friday, May 24, 2013

Everyone else is a robot is an exhibition by Richard Ibghy & Marilou Lemmens that explores the organisation of space as a political problem. The focus is on the relationship between the human body (and soul) and an environment shaped by economic paradigms. Here the political appears embedded in the architecture, furniture, and objects within a space, but also in the grammar – the rules, routines, and habitual processes it engenders.

Central to the exhibition is a video projection entitled Real failure needs no excuse (2012). Consisting of a series of performances realized for the camera in an empty office building in Glasgow, the piece investigates the transgressive potential of non-productive action and its relation to labour, the workplace and the imagination. The piece presents continuous flows of improvised actions in which materials are moved, piled, and assembled in various configurations. Precariously balanced structures, visible for only a short time, collapse (because everything, eventually, collapses) to make way for new shapes and arrangements. These operations combine equal doses of gravity-defying setups and sudden breakdowns to suggest a soul cracking under the stress of hyper-productivity.

Richard Ibghy & Marilou Lemmens have been working in collaboration since 2002. They are based in Durham-Sud, Quebec. Over the last few years, their work has questioned the rationale upon which economic actions are described and represented, and, more generally, how the logic of economics has come to infiltrate the most intimate areas of human life. From 2008 to 2010, they developed an umbrella project entitled Horse and Sparrow which is concerned with producing visual and semantic devices that articulate a reticence towards the models, systems, and narratives put forth by economists. More recent projects explore how desire and belief influence economic discourse and practices, sustain current economies, but also carry the potential for inciting new forms of doing economy.

Their work has been presented at the Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow; the 10th Sharjah Biennial, UAE; Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver; the European Media Art Festival, Osnabrück, Germany; and Trafó, House of Contemporary Arts, Budapest. Recent solo exhibitions include G Gallery, Toronto (2012); Monte Vista Projects, Los Angeles (2012); 221a, Vancouver (2012); and Galleria Alkovi, Helsinki (2011). Their artistic projects and writings have been published in Le Merle, C-magazine, New Social Inquiry, and Pyramid Power.