Adam Chodzko and Gareth Jones
In 1993, when invited to curate an exhibition at Cubitt’s new gallery space in King’s Cross, I knew immediately that I wanted to show the work of Adam Chodzko. Nearly two decades later, he was also my first choice for this portfolio. His approach feels as necessary now as it did then. It’s expected of artists to make fictions from reality, but Chodzko has the ability to make reality feel like a fiction. He makes you wonder what is real.
The exhibition at Cubitt was called Making People Disappear, a title that took the idea of energetic self-promotion – very much in the air at the time – and added a surrealist undertow. Chodzko took over the studio notice board and re-located the day-to-day business of studio life on the walls of the gallery. This simple but perpetually relevant procedure could stand as a modus operandi.
For his contribution to Curator’s Choice, he has worked with the pages of a scenic picture book from Iran in the mid-1970s and envisaged a scenario where a printmaking group has run out of paper and, becoming resourceful, applied their ideas to its pages. It is hard to imagine a work that moves between the Peacock Throne and a wet Wednesday in Whitstable, but Chodzko may have solved that for us. Each print in the edition is unique, a fragment of a larger work that cannot be pieced together.
Over the last twenty years, art empires have risen and fallen and Cubitt has become an enduring model of self-organisation, providing affordable studio space for over thirty artists in central London, alongside a non-profit gallery and an education programme. I became a studio holder this year, and currently chair the Cubitt Gallery Committee, which oversees the appointment of the curator. The success of the gallery, as marked by this portfolio, is also a testimony to the enthusiasm and commitment of the numerous artists who have worked at Cubitt and believed in the idea of an artist-run space.
Adam Chodzko
Selected Exhibitions
2011 Neue Alte Brucke, Frankfurt am Main (solo)
2011 Made in Britain – Contemporary Art from the British Council Collection 1980 – 2010 (group)
2010 Siakos.Hanappe, Athens (solo)
2008 Proxigean Tide, Tate St. Ives, St. Ives, England (solo)
2007 Signal, Malmö, Sweden (solo)
2007 Then, Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane and various sites across Dublin (solo)
2007 MAMbo, Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, Bologna (solo)
2004 Els Hanappe Underground, Athens (solo)
2003 Herbert Read Gallery, KIAD, Canterbury (solo)
2002 Cubitt, London (solo)
2001 Galleria Franco Noero, Turin (solo)
2001 Els Hanappe Underground, Athens (solo)
2000 Accademia Britannica (solo)
1999 Galleria Franco Noero, Turin (solo)
1999 Ikon Gallery, Birmingham (solo)
Collections
APT
Arts Council Collection
British Council Collection
British Film Institute
Contemporary Art Society Collection
Frac Languedoc-Rousillon
GAM – Galleria d’Arte Moderna
Grizedale Arts
MAMBo – Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna
Saatchi Collection
South London Gallery
Tate Collection
Education
1998 BA University of Manchester; 1994 MA Goldsmiths College