Adam Chodzko (born 1965) is a contemporary British artist, exhibiting internationally. His practice uses a wide range of media, including

video Video is an Electronics, electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving picture, moving image, visual Media (communication), media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, whi ...

, installation,

photography Photography is the visual arts, art, application, and practice of creating images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is empl ...

drawing Drawing is a Visual arts, visual art that uses an instrument to mark paper or another two-dimensional surface, or a digital representation of such. Traditionally, the instruments used to make a drawing include pencils, crayons, and ink pens, some ...

, and

performance A performance is an act or process of staging or presenting a play, concert, or other form of entertainment. It is also defined as the action or process of carrying out or accomplishing an action, task, or function. Performance has evolved glo ...

Early life and education

Adam Chodzko was born in

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

, England. He graduated from the

University of Manchester The University of Manchester is a public university, public research university in Manchester, England. The main campus is south of Manchester city centre, Manchester City Centre on Wilmslow Road, Oxford Road. The University of Manchester is c ...

in 1988 with a degree in the

History of Art The history of art focuses on objects made by humans for any number of spiritual, narrative, philosophical, symbolic, conceptual, documentary, decorative, and even functional and other purposes, but with a primary emphasis on its aesthetics ...

and in 1994 completed an MA in

Fine Art In European academic traditions, fine art (or, fine arts) is made primarily for aesthetics or creative expression, distinguishing it from popular art, decorative art or applied art, which also either serve some practical function (such as ...

Goldsmiths College Goldsmiths, University of London, formerly Goldsmiths College, University of London, is a Member institutions of the University of London, constituent research university of the University of London. It was originally founded in 1891 as The G ...

, London.

Work

Chodzko's artworks explore the interactions and possibilities of human behaviour "in the gap between how we are and how we could be." Exhibiting work since 1991, working across media, from

video installation Video installation is a contemporary art form that combines video technology with installation art, making use of all aspects of the surrounding environment to affect the audience. Tracing its origins to the birth of video art in the 1970s, it has ...

to subtle interventions, and with a practice that is situated both within the gallery and the wider public realm, Chodzko's work explores the idea of collective imagination, investigating how the visual might catalyse new forms of engagement between people. His art proposes new relationships between our value and belief systems, examining their effect on our communal and private spaces and working with the documents and fictions that control, describe and guide these systems and spaces. Working directly with the networks of people and places that surround him, often using forms of

anthropology Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, society, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including archaic humans. Social anthropology studies patterns of behav ...

, he focuses on the relational politics of culture's edges, endings, displacements, transitions and disappearances through a provocative looking in the 'wrong' place. Chodzko's practice operates between

documentary A documentary film (often described simply as a documentary) is a nonfiction Film, motion picture intended to "document reality, primarily for instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". The American author and ...

and fantasy (especially in the form of "

science fiction Science fiction (often shortened to sci-fi or abbreviated SF) is a genre of speculative fiction that deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts. These concepts may include information technology and robotics, biological manipulations, space ...

", using art to propose alternative realities),

conceptualism In metaphysics, conceptualism is a theory that explains universality of particulars as conceptualized frameworks situated within the thinking mind. Intermediate between nominalism and realism, the conceptualist view approaches the metaphysical ...

and

surrealism Surrealism is an art movement, art and cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists aimed to allow the unconscious mind to express itself, often resulting in the depiction of illogical or dreamlike s ...

and public and private space, often engaging reflexively and directly with the role of the viewer. Examples of Chodzko's socially-engaged artworks include ''Product Recall'' (1994, posters, advertisements and video installation), using the process of a

product recall "Product Recall" is the twenty-first episode of the third season of the American comedy television series '' The Office'' and the show's forty-ninth episode overall. The series depicts the everyday lives of office employees in the Scranton b ...

to assemble owners of a particular jacket made ten years earlier; ''Salò:Reunion'' (1998, posters, advertisements, photographs and video installation made through organising the reunion of the children 'murdered' in ''Salò'' (1972),

Pasolini Pier Paolo Pasolini (; 5 March 1922 – 2 November 1975) was an Italian poet, film director, writer, actor and playwright. He is considered one of the defining public intellectuals in 20th-century Italian history, influential both as an artist ...

's notorious film); ''The god Look-Alike Contest'' (1992, a mixed media installation created through responses to an advertisement in a classified advertisements paper); and ''cell-a'' (2002, a slide projection and event, initiated through giving a London gallery's archive to a group of Kurdish asylum seekers to edit and mediate outside the capital). Chodzko's development of these ideas and processes later became consolidated into a body of work collectively titled ''Design for a Carnival'' (c. 2001–2007). This includes works such as ''Plan for a Spell'' (2001, a video exploring ritual within the British landscape through programming its image, subtitles and audio to randomly combine in order to release a potential 'spell' embedded within it); ''Settlement'' (2004, the legal purchase of a square foot of land as a gift to a stranger), ''Nightshift'' (2004, the tracking of a late night parade of nocturnal animals to the

Frieze Art Fair Frieze Art Fair is an annual contemporary art, contemporary art festival, art fair first held in 2003 in London's Regent's Park. Developed by the founders of the contemporary art magazine ''Frieze (magazine), Frieze'', the fair has since expan ...

, mapped, to provide animal paths through the fair's 'labyrinth' for human visitors to follow) and ''M-path'' (2006, the collection and distribution of "appropriate" footwear for gallery visitors to wear, altering their movement through the gallery space, and therefore their perception of it). A trilogy of video installations, ''Hole'' (2007, at

Bologna Museum of Modern Art The Museo d'Arte Moderna di Bologna or MAMbo is a purpose-designed modern and experimental art museum in Bologna, Italy — and which includes The , a collection of more than 250 works by noted painter, Giorgio Morandi (1890–1964). Histor ...

), ''Around'' (2007, based in Dublin and partly set in

Ballymun Ballymun () is a suburb of Dublin, Ireland, at the northern edge of the city's Northside. Ballymun has several sub-districts, such as Sillogue, Coultry, Shangan and Poppintree, and is close to Dublin Airport. A metro stop on a city-to-airpo ...

) and ''Pyramid'' (2008, commissioned for the Folkestone Triennial) developed a series of myths set in the near future and focused on the relationship between a community and its architectural ruins. ''Echo'' (2009, a video installation commissioned by Creative Time, New York), interweaves archive footage, documentary technique and conjecture to reveal that a derelict military ballroom on

Governors Island Governors Island is a island in New York Harbor, within the Boroughs of New York City, New York City borough of Manhattan. It is located approximately south of Manhattan Island, and is separated from Brooklyn to the east by the Buttermilk ...

, New York, was a site used for an anti-materialistic gift-exchange ritual invented by the children of the island's military. Throughout these earlier works, and further explored in later works such as ''The Pickers'' (2009, the editing of a British film archive by a group of migrant Romanian strawberry pickers) and ''Ghost'' (2010, a kayak designed by Chodzko for "visiting the dead"), are investigations into processes of how memory, archiving, empathy, identification and the imaginary are shaped by the act of looking. ''Because'', (2013, at Tate Britain, as part of the exhibition ''Schwitters in Britain'') and ''We are Ready for your Arrival'' (2013 at Raven Row, London) further develop these ideas through sculpture, video, drawing and photography, presented as manifestations of the unconscious relationships between individuals and groups; their excesses, displacements and disappearances. Invited by the

Benaki Museum The Benaki Museum, established and endowed in 1930 by Antonis Benakis in memory of his father Emmanuel Benakis, is housed in the Benakis family mansion in Athens, Greece. The museum houses Greek works of art from the prehistorical to the modern ...

, Athens, to work with its collection Chodzko made ''You'll see; this time it will be different'', (2013), an exhibition as

retrospective A retrospective (from Latin ', "look back"), generally, is a look back at events that took place, or works that were produced, in the past. As a noun, ''retrospective'' has specific meanings in software development, popular culture, and the arts. ...

, of 20 apparently 'old' posters advertising exhibitions (with themes ranging from: ''Jealous Animals'' to ''Unpopularity'') of the Benaki collection, set in the future (2065–2078), and sited in often 'impossible,’ peripheral spaces, dispersed to the outskirts of Greece. Place as a site which appears to exercise power and influence over the people who happen to occupy it is often explored through Chodzko's use of displacement, separating objects and images from their familiar and 'natural' time and situation in order to relocate them in the "wrong place" so that a change might be catalysed by that dislocation. A series of works entitled ''Better Scenery'' (2000–2002) sited pairs of mutually dependent billboard signs at various locations in the world giving travel directions to the location of the opposite sign. The ''Flasher'' works (1990-1996) were a series of one-minute videos, shot by Chodzko, documenting darkness being temporarily illuminated by marine distress-flares, with these sequences individually disseminated by adding them to the surplus tape following the credits of

VHS VHS (Video Home System) is a discontinued standard for consumer-level analog video recording on tape cassettes, introduced in 1976 by JVC. It was the dominant home video format throughout the tape media period of the 1980s and 1990s. Ma ...

feature films tapes rented from video rental-stores. The theme of physically remote but intimate cross-cultural

social networks A social network is a social structure consisting of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), networks of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of meth ...

, operating on both a conscious and unconscious (or even supernatural) level, has been a consistent theme in Chodzko's work, from the anticipation of digital social-networking communities in the ''Transmitter'' series (1990-) and ''The god Look-Alike Contest'' (1991) and more recently in the installation ''A Room for Laarni, Image Moderator'' (2013). This latter series of mixed-media works are based around the relationship and flow of images between a western European social-networking site (for teenagers) and an image moderator, based in the Philippines, whose job it is to monitor this flood of digital photographs, in order to flag up those whose contents might be deemed 'bad'. ''Deep Above'' (2015) and ''Rising'' (2013) expose a process of '''making sense of imagery in relation to our collective and individual responses to the threat of climate change. These works speculate that, inadvertently, a repurposing of ‘art thinking’ might be the only way of short-circuiting the psychological paralysis (caused by our brains’ hardwiring) so that we might take action in order to avert climate change, while ''Sleepers'' (2016) explores our empathic projection when encountering the imagery of the unconsciousness of others. ''Channel, Rupture','' 2015 and ''Design for a Fold','' 2015, both continue Chodzko's speculations about the effects of flows of empathy across time and space and between the local and the remote. Many of Chodzko’s works evolve through this sense of projecting outwards from the self into the perception of, not only other people, but also the inanimate through migratory embodiments with objects, rooms, places, institutions, images. Recent works have continued explorations into the relationships between place (particularly the idea of ‘the garden’), perception, identity, mythology, ritual, language, the body and the unconscious (e.g.; ''A Hostile Environment'' (2019), ''Fluid Dynamics''; ''The Quail is Rising'' (2020), ''O, you happy roots, branch and mediatrix'' ive(2020), ''Thru hole I blind/O/Thru hole oui see'' (2020)). Although curated into many of the major

Young British Artist The Young British Artists, or YBAs—also referred to as Brit artists and Britart—is a loose group of visual artists who first began to exhibit together in London in 1988. Many of the YBA artists graduated from the BA Fine Art course at Golds ...

exhibitions (e.g.;

Sensation (art exhibition) ''Sensation'' was an exhibition of the collection of contemporary art owned by Charles Saatchi, including many works by Young British Artists (YBAs), which first took place 18 September – 28 December 1997 at the Royal Academy of Arts in Londo ...

, and

Brilliant! ''Brilliant!'' was a group exhibition of contemporary art held at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, USA between 22 October 1995 and 7 January 1996. It traveled to the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Texas, where it was ...

) of the 1990s (and in 2014, ''London Calling''), Chodzko's practice - from his 1990 works with pre-internet social networks via

classified advertisements Classified advertising is a form of advertising, particularly common in newspapers, online and other periodicals, which may be sold or distributed free of charge. Classified advertisements are much cheaper than larger display advertisements use ...

- is more closely identifiable (through its notions of participation, process,

intersubjectivity Intersubjectivity describes the shared understanding that emerges from interpersonal interactions. The term first appeared in social science in the 1970s and later incorporated into psychoanalytic theory by George E. Atwood and Robert Stolorow, ...

and community) with the Relational art that was to follow (partly in opposition to the dependency on spectacle that defined

YBA YBA or yba can refer to a number of things: * Young British Artists, a movement of British artists in the 1980s and 1990s * Yala language, a language spoken in Ogoja, Nigeria, by ISO 639 code * Young Buddhist Association, an association of Bud ...

art).

Kevin Jackson Kevin Andre Jackson (born November 25, 1964) is an American retired freestyle and folkstyle wrestler, and mixed martial artist. Following his competitive career, Jackson would become a wrestling coach. During his international career, Jackso ...

, (1996) singled out Chodzko from the other YBA's for his art's "''pensiveness''", involving "''quiet acts of infiltration''...''nothing to do with one-line shock effects.''" In 2013, Dan Fox, reappraising the diversity of British Art of the early 1990s, writes of Chodzko's work from this period as developing a ''"British occult modern... behavioural experiments to probe the public sphere."'', whilst

Jonathan Jones (journalist) Jonathan Jones is a British art critic who has written for ''The Guardian'' since 1999. He has appeared in the BBC television series '' Private Life of a Masterpiece'' and in 2009 was a judge for the Turner Prize. He has also been a judge for ...

described Chodzko as a "''subversive...master of provocation''" in ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

''.

Exhibitions

Since 1991, Chodzko has exhibited at numerous venues around the world including

Tate Britain Tate Britain, known from 1897 to 1932 as the National Gallery of British Art and from 1932 to 2000 as the Tate Gallery, is an art museum on Millbank in the City of Westminster in London, England. It is part of the Tate network of galleries in En ...

;

Tate St Ives Tate St Ives is an art gallery in St Ives, Cornwall, St Ives, Cornwall, England, exhibiting work by modern British artists with links to the St Ives area. The Tate also took over management of another museum in the town, the Barbara Hepworth Mu ...

;

Venice Biennale The Venice Biennale ( ; ) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy. There are two main components of the festival, known as the Art Biennale () and the Venice Biennale of Architecture, Architecture Biennale (), ...

;

Royal Academy The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House in Piccadilly London, England. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its ...

, London; Deste Foundation, Athens; PS1, NY;

Ikon Gallery The Ikon Gallery () is an England, English art gallery, gallery of contemporary art, located in Brindleyplace, Birmingham. It is housed in the Listed building, Grade II listed, neo-Gothic former Oozells Street Board School, designed by John Henr ...

, Birmingham; Kunstmuseum Luzern;

Henry Moore Institute The Henry Moore Foundation is a registered charity in England, established for education and promotion of the fine arts — in particular, to advance understanding of the works of Henry Moore, and to promote the public appreciation of sculpt ...

, Leeds;

Yorkshire Sculpture Park The Yorkshire Sculpture Park (YSP) is an art gallery, with both open-air and indoor exhibition spaces, in West Bretton, Wakefield, in West Yorkshire, England. It shows work by British and international artists, including Henry Moore and Barb ...

;

Athens Biennale The Athens Biennale (abbr. AB) is an international cultural event held every two years at various locations in Athens, consisting of a large-scale exhibition and a diverse programme of side events, such as performances, workshops, lectures etc. I ...

;

Istanbul Biennial The Istanbul Biennial is a contemporary art exhibition that has been held biennially in Istanbul, Turkey, since 1987. The Biennial has been organised by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (IKSV) since its inception. Istanbul Biennial p ...

;

, Athens; and Folkestone Triennial. His commissioners include Creative Time, NY; The Contemporary Art Society;

;

Hayward Gallery The Hayward Gallery is an art gallery within the Southbank Centre in central London, England and part of an area of major arts venues on the South Bank of the River Thames. It is sited adjacent to the other Southbank Centre buildings (the Royal ...

an
Film And Video Umbrella
Chodzko has been included in many

British Council The British Council is a British organisation specialising in international cultural and educational opportunities. It works in over 100 countries: promoting a wider knowledge of the United Kingdom and the English language (and the Welsh lang ...

curated international exhibitions of British Art including ''General Release'' (1995) in Venice, ''Micro/Macro: British Art 1996-2002'',(2003), Mucsarnok Kunsthalle, Budapest, ''Breaking Step'' (2007), Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade, and ''Private Utopia'' (2014), Japan.

Awards

In 2002, Chodzko received awards from the

Paul Hamlyn Paul Hamlyn, Baron Hamlyn, (born Paul Bertrand Wolfgang Hamburger; 12 February 1926 – 31 August 2001) was a German-born British publisher and philanthropist, who established the Paul Hamlyn Foundation in 1987. Early life He was born Paul Be ...

Foundation and the

Foundation for Contemporary Arts The Foundation for Contemporary Arts (FCA), is a nonprofit based foundation in New York City that offers financial support and recognition to contemporary performing and visual artists through awards for artistic innovation and potential. It was ...

Grants to Artists award, and in 2007 was awarded an AHRC Creative Research Fellowship in the Film Department at the

University of Kent The University of Kent (formerly the University of Kent at Canterbury, abbreviated as UKC) is a Collegiate university, collegiate public university, public research university based in Kent, United Kingdom. The university was granted its roya ...

, Canterbury. In 2015 Chodzko was shortlisted for the Jarman Award. In 2016 Chodzko received an award from DACS ART360 in order to facilitate the comprehensive archiving of his artwork from 1990 to the present.

Collections

Chodzko's work is in the collections of the

Tate Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the UK ...

; The British Council; The Arts Council;

The British Film Institute The British Film Institute (BFI) is a film and television charitable organisation which promotes and preserves filmmaking and television in the United Kingdom. The BFI uses funds provided by the National Lottery to encourage film production, ...

;

Artist Pension Trust The Artist Pension Trust (APT), which merged into the MutualArt Group in 2016, is an investment vehicle specializing in contemporary art, which aims to provide financial security and international exposure to selected artists chosen by its intern ...

; Auckland City Art Gallery; Contemporary Art Society; The Creative Foundation: Folkestone; Frac Languedoc-Rousillon; GAM - Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Turin; Grizedale Arts;

LUX The lux (symbol: lx) is the unit of illuminance, or luminous flux per unit area, in the International System of Units (SI). It is equal to one lumen per square metre. In photometry, this is used as a measure of the irradiance, as perceived by ...

; Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna; Plains Art Museum, North Dakota; Saatchi Collection,

South London Gallery The South London Gallery, founded 1891, is a public-funded gallery of contemporary art in Camberwell, London. Until 1992, it was known as the South London Art Gallery, and nowadays the acronym SLG is often used. Margot Heller became its direct ...

;

Towner Gallery Towner Eastbourne (formerly Towner Art Gallery) is an art gallery located in Eastbourne, East Sussex, on the south coast of England. The gallery hosts one of the most significant public art collections in the Southern England, South of England ...

, Eastbourne,

Wellcome Collection Wellcome Collection is a museum and library based at 183 Euston Road, London, England, displaying a mixture of medical artefacts and original artworks exploring "ideas about the connections between medicine, life and art". Founded in 2007, the W ...

and many international museums and private collections.

Teaching

Chodzko's involvement in teaching Fine Art at

Higher Education Tertiary education (higher education, or post-secondary education) is the educational level following the completion of secondary education. The World Bank defines tertiary education as including universities, colleges, and vocational schools ...

and

Further Education Further education (often abbreviated FE) in the United Kingdom and Ireland is additional education to that received at secondary school that is distinct from the higher education (HE) offered in universities and other academic institutions. It ...

institutions, on

B.A. A Bachelor of Arts (abbreviated B.A., BA, A.B. or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is the holder of a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the liberal arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree ...

and M.A. degree courses includes, in the UK;

Central Saint Martins Central Saint Martins is a constituent college of the University of the Arts London, a public art university in London, England. The college offers full-time courses at foundation, undergraduate and postgraduate levels, and a variety of short ...

Chelsea College of Arts Chelsea College of Arts is a Colleges of the University of the Arts London, constituent college of the University of the Arts London, a public art and design university in London, England. It offers further education, further and higher educ ...

Slade School of Fine Art The UCL Slade School of Fine Art (informally The Slade) is the art school of University College London (UCL) and is based in London, England. It has been ranked as the UK's top art and design educational institution. The school is organised as ...

Goldsmiths University of London Goldsmiths, University of London, formerly Goldsmiths College, University of London, is a constituent research university of the University of London. It was originally founded in 1891 as The Goldsmiths' Technical and Recreative Institute by ...

University for the Creative Arts The University for the Creative Arts is a specialist art and design university in Southern England. It was formed in 2005 as University College for the Creative Arts at Canterbury, Epsom, Farnham, Maidstone and Rochester when the Kent Institu ...

Sheffield Hallam University Sheffield Hallam University (SHU) is a public research university in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England. The university is based on two sites; the City Campus is located in the city centre near Sheffield station, Sheffield railway station, whil ...

Liverpool John Moores University Liverpool John Moores University (abbreviated LJMU) is a public university, public research university in the city of Liverpool, England. The university can trace its origins to the Liverpool Mechanics' School of Arts, established in 1823. This ...

Ruskin College Ruskin College, originally known as Ruskin Hall, Oxford, is a higher education institution and part of the University of West London, in Oxford, England. It is not a Colleges of the University of Oxford, college of Oxford University. Named ...

, Oxford and with young people at Open School East. In the US:

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The institution was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools. In 1912, it became the Carnegie Institu ...

Rutgers University Rutgers University ( ), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a Public university, public land-grant research university consisting of three campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's C ...

. In Canada:

Banff Centre Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity (formerly Banff Centre) is an arts and culture educational institution in Banff, Alberta, Banff, Alberta. It offers arts programs in the Performing arts, performing and fine arts, as well as leadership trai ...

. From 2014-2018 Chodzko was Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at the

's School of Music and Fine Art, based at

Chatham Dockyard Chatham Dockyard was a Royal Navy Dockyard located on the River Medway in Kent. Established in Chatham, Kent, Chatham in the mid-16th century, the dockyard subsequently expanded into neighbouring Gillingham, Kent, Gillingham; at its most extens ...

. He is on the Faculty of Fine Art for the

British School at Rome The British School at Rome (BSR) is a British interdisciplinary research centre supporting the arts, humanities and architecture established in Rome. Historical and archaeological study are at the core of its activities. History The British Sc ...

Notes and references

External links

* *
Interview for Stretcher Magazine

Tate Britain commission of work by Adam Chodzko as part of Kurt Schwitters exhibition, 2013.

Adam Chodzko exhibition at Raven Row, London 2013.

Article in Frieze magazine, written by Adam Chodzko about films that have influenced his practice

Martin Herbert, 2012, article written about Chodzko's moving image work

Interview with Adam Chodzko for ISIS magazine, 2013
{{DEFAULTSORT:Chodzko, Adam Living people British conceptual artists British contemporary artists British installation artists British video artists 1965 births British people of Polish descent Artists from London Alumni of Goldsmiths, University of London Alumni of the University of Manchester English contemporary artists