Common Culture
Preview 7th December 6-8pm
December 8th - January 12th 2007

This exhibition presents the second part of a two part exhibition by Common Culture curated by Hugh Mulholland.   The first instalment of the exhibition took place in Void, Derry and included a live performance of 'Bouncers' and DVD installations of 'Local Comics' and runs until 22nd December 2006. In Bouncers, Common Culture continue their interest in popular culture and the demarcation of social space. Through the deployment of nightclub 'Bouncers', they stage a powerful performance that addresses the tensions involved in the management of cultural power and the control of social space.   The portraits of this live work will be exhibited at the third space.

"The photographs are unrefined, for all the self-composure and commanding presence of their subjects.   Details bring out slippages in the desired self image, aberrations which spoil the self-managed and controlled looks to camera. There is also, though, something of the school photograph about the portraits of the bouncers.   They catch that awkwardness in the presence of the camera, in tandem with the pressure to look 'right' for it, that often characterizes the genre. A boyish quality undermines the image of hardness"
Dr. Alison Rowley - Pop Trauma catalogue

Common Culture's new work produced under the collective title of Pop Trauma develops their previous interest in object-based commodity forms and extends it into an examination of how the culture industry routinely commodifies human labour and experience as entertainment.   In Local Comics, individual comedians are each separately filmed performing their act in an empty comedy club. Each routine is recorded by a stationary video camera, set up to give a close-up head and shoulders portrait of the individual comedians.   Each recording lasts the duration of the comedian's routine, beginning and closing with the empty stage before and after each performance.   The 'Local Comics' installation consists of multiple screen projections of the unedited footage of each comic's act. The close ups, invite connections with the talking head mode of documentary. Only what we get is a form of brutal banter, the sense of a stream of consciousness, a wild, ill-mannered, crude, uncensored, unedited, document of individual lived experiences, fantasies and fears.   The display of a succession of scripted or improvised routines, collectively offers the viewer an incessant babbling, a garrulous tirade, the only limit being the 40 minutes duration of the tape.

The exhibitions will be accompanied by the publication of, Common Culture - Pop Trauma, a 120 pp full colour priced £12.00