Elephant Lab X Art Gazette Summer Residency
Bex Massey and Long Huang were selected from an open call to spend 6 weeks during summer creating artworks in their studios using materials provided by Elephant Lab.
The works created during the residency are on display and available to view at Art Gazette’s studio for three weeks.
Bex Massey
1st Aug - 18th Sept
During the residency I have been researching lesbian histories and their lack of mainstream visibility. I have therefore experimented with ways in which to document this ‘invisibility’ in paint. Works exhibited form two different lines of investigation surrounding these themes: Firstly via Apps and looking at myself and lesbian consciousness in the present date and secondly working with historical underpainting with a 3D twist in looking at two of my Queer 1930’s hero’s-the painter Gluck and the author Radclyffe Hall. In looking to the present date I have taken the term ‘invert’, coined by Karl Heinrich Ulrichs in 1897 to describe ‘homosexuals’ and applied it to two images of myself with the aid of the Photoshop’s ‘invert’ tool. These paintings have left me unrecognisable and as such invisible.
In looking to the past I have centred work on a ’Jack’ - a 19th Century slang term for ‘lesbian’, recently popularised by the BBC’s adaptation of Anne Lister’s diaries in ‘Gentleman Jack. I have therefore painted ‘Jack Dawson’ of Leonardo do Caprio and Titanic fame over the two historic and pioneering lesbians and as such rendered them near invisible.
Guests of the show are asked to interact with the two inverted canvas via this Instagram filter (or QR code on site) to transform them into more realistic forms.
www.bexmassey.com
Long Huang
1st Aug - 18th Sept
In partnership with Elephant Lab X Art Gazette.
During my time on the residency I will be creating a series of small paintings along with one or two large scale paintings to continuing shaping my current painting practices in terms of skill, technique and subject. My goal is to find a way that helps me bring my current painting styles together into a balance that it coexist both abstract elements and narratives.
This series contains 6 small-size paintings. The name of the painting was inspired by Vladimir Eshkilex who proposed a method in Metamodernism and redefined the artistic approach from a literature perspective, which depicts the image of an idealized world and reshaped it by individual empiricism. Post-Pandemic retrospection: this theme contains two paintings that I tend to play with the idea of how people rethink of Covid-19 pandemic period and how they perceive the meaning behind these epidemic prevention measures such as face masks, disinfectant spray, and rapid lateral flow tests.
www.longhuangart.com
Alumni:

May 2022


April 2022


November 2021


August 2021


May 2021


February 2021


March 2020

My painting process works with intuition, colour, rhythm and movement setting up a space for my memories of the tropical to appear. From this, feelings of nostalgia and longing become present. As this space unfolds I go in search of specific sensations and affects such as the sentimental, celebration, joy and euphoria. This process generates questions that relate back to nature. From this position a transformation occurs that creates fictional spaces, which employs a celebratory method of painting. As such I am searching for repetitive motifs that can consistently reproduce this celebratory method. As a result further sensations of vibrancy and the feminine begin to unravel and produce meaning.
www.goiamujalli.com
March 2020

On the hunt for social situations that cross between the surreal and “ordinary”. I link image, sound and video clips that I have captured from around the world. Piecing together a fictional reality, whilst connecting the disparate elements.
My focus is drawn to the meeting points at random, the idea of simultaneous possibilities co- existing allows me to explore and connect “different worlds at the same time”. The reconstruction element within my work often gives reference to the complex layers of history, of movement of people and goods, and cultural displacement. I have taken much of my inspiration for the development of my work from the Rhizome concept developed by Deleuze and Guattari. "A Rhizome has no beginning or end" I develop my research into identity through a non-starting point, pushing the Connections and multiplicities that evolve within the work.
www.chinatree.me
March 2020

My concern is the contested territory between the natural world, rational science and what is human. This relationship informs how we understand ourselves as actors within our environment.
My work combines layers of drawing, painting and collage. A mathematically composed base image provides the conditions for pareidolia to occur. Over-drawing encourages human error, individual interpretation and idiosyncrasy.
Visceral glimpses of spaces, objects and creatures. Motifs and snapshots are superimposed onto one another. Worlds emerge at both macro and micro scales. The pictures delight in the atmospheric qualities of space. Akin to being lost in the deep forest, time and space are ambiguous. Mystery and disorientation is encouraged. Parts meld into each other, location and dimension are unclear.

February 2020
