A l a n a  J e l i n e k

art as philosophical praxis

CURRENT
Tall Stories: Cannibal Forks
Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology,
University of Cambridge. 25 May 2012-2013

Click for more

A bit of contextual info:

Recently I've been asked about the range of my artwork. Not only do I use a wide range of media including performance, collaborative, novel writing, painting and site-specific interventions, but I explore a wide range of seemingly unrelated subjects. For me, they're not unrelated, but it is true, for an artistic practice, it is a wide and relatively disparate range of interests.

This is a brief attempt at an overarching theme:

Art, for me, is a philosophical praxis. What I mean by this is that, for me, art is a philosophical enquiry using materiality to explore, interrogate and enact ideas. All of my work explores mechanisms of power and an individual's relationship to these. This includes the historical, colonial past, with its legacies in the present and the present within neoliberalism. 

 
I choose the medium to best explore an idea. I was trained as a painter (1987-90) so I've been drawn to the language and implications of oil paint; the medium of oil paint as motif for traditional power structures,
but I also have a deep ambivalence towards stuff, making yet more stuff in a world with too much stuff in it and perhaps with too great a preoccupation with stuff. So I am drawn to types of practice that avoid this problem - ephemera, or giving away stuff, or performance, or sharing in collaborative events. 

A bit of biog info:

• Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC)
  Creative Fellow, Museum of Anthropology and Archeaology, University of Cambridge, 2009-2014
• PhD at Oxford Brookes University 2004-2008. 50:50 History of Art: Fine Art Practice,
  'Art as a democratic act: the interplay of context and content in contemporary art' AHRC award
• MA (Gender,Society, Culture) Birkbeck college, University of London 1992-4
• BA (Fine Art - Painting) Victoria College, Prahran, Melbourne, Australia with modules in Philosophy and History and Philosophy of Science, University of Melbourne 1987-90
  chronological CV link
  

see below for art and exhibitions info

Published first novel 2007 'Ohm's Law' with terra incognita
(terra incognita link) ISBN: 978-0-9535045-3-4

Visual Art Exhibitions across England, Australia, France, Japan, and Bangkok, Thailand; Poznan, Poland; Moscow, Russia; Dniepropretrovsk, Ukraine.

Curating, art project management and exhibition design for various institutions since 1997. Co-founded terra incognita arts organisation 1997

Education work since 1993, including schools, museums and galleries, further and higher education.

Contact :
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It should read: info [AT] this URL

colonialism

painting

collaborations

interventions

w r i t i n g

online

neoliberalism

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performance

• BLACCXN (2004-ongoing)
• PR guru #6 for BLACCXN
  Whitechapel Art Gallery (2006, 2010), Edinburgh Fringe Festival (2006), Citigroup Tower, London (2008), Tate Britain / Arts Catalyst (2009), Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology, University of Camrbidge (2009), August Art (2011)
• corporate sponsor
  EAST INTERNATIONAL (2005)

colonialism

• Arts & Humanities Research Council Creative Fellowship (2009-2014)
  Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology, University of Cambridge
• BLACCXN sponsorship of Archaeology Gallery 2009
  site-specific intervention
• Tall Stories: Cannibal Forks 2010
  site-specific intervention, made as collaboration
• Tall Stories: Cannibal Forks 2012
  'Gifts & Discoveries', Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology
• Not Praising, Burying 2012
  participatory artwork revisiting Conceptual Art interrogating ancient Greek red-figure and black-figure pottery
• The Fork's Tale, as narrated by itself 2013
  a novel written from the point of view of a cannibal fork in the museum's collection. Published by chapter on a monthly basis throughout 2013, available only by subscription or from Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology.

writing

• The Fork's Tale, as narrated by itself (2013)
• novel a novel written from the point of view of a cannibal fork in the museum's collection. Published by chapter on a monthly basis throughout 2013, published by LemonMelon. Subscriptions from LemonMelon. Complete bound books available from 2014
• This is Not Art : activism and other not art (2013)
• published by I.B.Tauris
• Ohm's Law (2007)
• novel: 'the relationship between power and resistance', published by terra incognita

collaborations

• The Field (2009-ongoing)
  experimental artwork
• ongoing, collaborative project sited in a 13 acre field and woodland near Stansted Airport, Essex aimed to making connections between art and science, making and doing, theory and practice, knowledge and 'knowledge', human and non-human, urban and rural
• wiki for participants
• Tall Stories: Cannibal Forks (2010) 
  video and objects
• collaboration with staff at Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology carving cannibal forks using traditional English carving techniques and indigeous English wood, retelling the various stories promulgated about nineteenth century Fiji and cannibalism.
• Details (2006)
  paintings
• collaboration with Ban Krua community, a traditional silk weaving community in Bangkok, Thailand to inform site-specific intervention at Jim Thompson House, Bangkok. Members of the community were asked to take photos of everday objects or their homes from the outside. These were translated into oil paintings, done on the back of Jim Thompson silk stretched like canvas. They were placed throughout the museum, disrupting the view of the museum's version of authentic Thai life. The intervention was censored after a few weeks.

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painting

online

online work 1: BLACCXN

online work 2: me-you-them

online work 3: Corporate Sponsorship

online work 4: The People's Vote

online work 5: Europe the Game

online work 6: The Guidebook

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interventions

• Tall Stories: Cannibal Forks (2010)
  site-specific intervention, made as collaboration, Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology, University of Cambridge
• BLACCXN sponsorship of Archaeology Gallery (2009)
  site-specific intervention, Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology, University of Cambridge
• The Field (2009-ongoing)
• Collaborative, durational, anti-utopian intervention
  
• Capital Growth (Mayday 2009)
• 6 x paintings as site-specific interventions
  floor based oil painting x arrangement 3mx3m. Paintings of Board room interior of London Stock Exchange, Computer hub of London Stock Exchange, Foyer of London Stock Exchange, London Metals Exchange, Lloyds of London interior, BLACCXN board room placed and left at Canary Wharf, Lonodon, the Ministry of Defence, London, Tate Modern, The Science Museum, the Olympic site, Unilever Building University of Cambridge
• BLACCXN AGM, Citigroup Tower, Canary Wharf, London (2008)
• site-specific intervention
  Major shareholders wined and dined as they were taken through BLACCXN's profitable year and strategies to secure a profitable future
• Details (2006)
  
• paintings
  collaboration with Ban Krua community, a traditional silk weaving community in Bangkok, Thailand to inform site-specific intervention at Jim Thompson House, Bangkok. Members of the community were asked to take photos of everday objects or their homes from the outside. These were translated into oil paintings, done on the back of Jim Thompson silk stretched like canvas. They were placed throughout the museum, disrupting the view of the museum's version of authentic Thai life. The intervention was censored after a few weeks.
• Trickle Down + (2006)
• site-specific game
• Sponsorship (2005)
• performance-intervention
• @Tate Modern (2000-2005)
• 2004/5 and 2005/6 'Inter-gallery educator's course' aimed at addressing the under-representation of non-'white' artists employed by Tate Modern and other London galleries (with South London Gallery, Horniman Museum, Whitechapel Art Gallery, British Library, Hayward Gallery) Course and paid placement for 8-10 participants per year
• 2003 and 2004 'Ghetto Superstar' Course for young people (Raw Canvas programme) exploring history of Black artists and interrogating current issues of representation at Tate Modern
• 2001 'Working within and against Tate Modernism', Third Text, Winter 2001/2
  
• & many interventions as guest speaker at talks and conferences, where necessary, including 'Ethics of Encounter' workshop, Stills Gallery Edinburgh 2011, ' Recessional Aesthetics', James Taylor Gallery, London 2010, 'Good Business is the Best Art', Tate Modern, 2009
  

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Formerly, www.alanajelinek.com was exclusively used as the portal for artwork:

a l a n a j e l i n e k

 me - you - them

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BLACCXN metacorp sponsorship of the archaeology gallery aimed at investigating a relationship between sponsorship, museums display and interpretation in a site-specific intervention into the 30 year old archaeology display at the Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology, University of Cambridge. The original display told an already philosophically and archaeologically out-dated story of human evolution and progress, celebrating a particularly insidious version of human evolutionary theory. The BLACCXN intervention highlighted these ideas, the racist assumptions behind them and the link with neo-liberalism - it's all part of the natural order. 
The Private View happened on Thursday 22 October 2009, timed to intervene into The Cambridge Festival of Ideas and Darwin's 200 year anniversary celebrations.

2) Artwork - intervention - events 

'Tall Stories & Cannibal Forks'  

In 2010, the artwork 'Tall Stories: Cannibal Forks' was shown at the Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology
University of Cambridge as a site-specific intervention, in dialogue with the museum's display and collection
of 'cannibal forks' from nineteenth century Fiji. These are a highly contested object type, embodying colonial relations
and continuing mythology about cannibalism and the South Pacific. 
The artwork is both an 8min video showing a group of people's hands carving a cannibal fork from tree branch to
decorated object accompanied by an audio track of the various knowledges and stories held by staff from the Museum.

Inspiration for the artwork, which formed a turning point in ongoing research at the Museum happened whil I was pawing some elegant forms made from wood from the museum's collections, admiring their shape and the skill involved. They were being photographed by Mark Adams in my office. Eventually I asked what they were. He said, 'cannibal forks'.
I sought out more information. They didn't make sense to me as a shape and I wondered about the usual shape of the forks if these were really used for cannibal purposes. I was told a range of stories from hair-raising missionary tales of Fijian sadism and barbarity to an idea current in anthropological circles that few if any of these were made for these purposes. Many, perhaps all, were made in response to 19th century tourists like 
misionaries and early ethnologists.

This work explores stories and story-telling. Who seeks out what type of knowledge and why? Why are we open to some stories and closed to others? It is not a search for the truth about cannibal forks.

Click for interpretative text for this work

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Capital Growth
MayDay 2009 intervention

In various sites across London and Cambridge, on the first day of my post-doctoral Fellowship in the Creative & Performing Arts (arts & Humanities Research Council funded), 1 May 2009, a series of exquisite oil-paintings were placed for Mayday. The six paintings are birds-eye views of specific corporate sites including the boardroom of the London Stock Exchange and the foyer, the floor of the London Metal Exchange and the Lloyds building and the fictional BLACCXN boardroom.The paintings are comprised of 9 canvases and measure 3sqm in total. They were placed in an x-mark and left to the elements, the police, art-lovers... 

The above image is a birds eye view of the BLACCXN headquarters, linking 'Capital Growth' to the wider BLACCXN project. Image by Kristian Buus.

For images and details of the other 5 paintings before and after the intervention, click here.

Mayday 2009
AM:
• 07.00 Tate Modern, Bankside - near front lawn, on the eastern edge near Millenium Bridge. 
• Painting of London Stock Exchange boardroom


• 09.00 Ministry of Defence, Victoria Embankment - either in the park or on the pavement. If there are major problems with police harassment we will be taking the paintings to Rt Hon John Hutton, Secretary of State for Defence as a gift. 
• Painting of London Metal Exchange


• 10.00 Science Museum, Kensington Gore - in the shipping innovation part of floor two, near the BP sponsored 'Energy Exhibition'
• Painting of Lloyds building (original interior)

PM:

• 13.45 Canary Wharf, Westferry Road circus
• Painting of London Stock Exchange computer hub
  

• 15.30 Olympic site, on the Greenway, nearest tube Pudding Mill Lane
• Painting of BLACCXN headquarters

• 17.45 Unilever Centre for Molecular Science Informatics Building, University of Cambridge
• Painting of London Stock Exchange foyer