I work across painting, photography, assemblage and installation. My research involves collecting and documenting places and objects which have been left to waste: I photograph abandoned buildings and places, I collect rubbish from the street and respond to this material by incorporating painting and assemblage - In fact, Jo Dennis is a hoarder.
I work across painting, photography, assemblage and installation. My research involves collecting and documenting places and objects which have been left to waste: I photograph abandoned buildings and places, I collect rubbish from the street and respond to this material by incorporating painting and assemblage - In fact, Jo Dennis is a hoarder.
Found objects and studio waste are catalysts for work which addresses our emotional connection to places, the transformation of surfaces and objects, and how this relates to temporality. The works I produce address themes related to home, shelter, memory and mortality.
I aim to interrogate how a sense of belonging is realized in connection to ruination and dereliction. A great part of my focus is on the role paint plays in these places and processes and how this surface materiality and texture portrays the passing of time. I seek to amplify the sensibilities embodied in these structures, remnants and residual materials in paint.
Jo Dennis (b 1973, UK)
https://jo-dennis.com/
@joeddennis
Education
Royal College of Art MA Painting 2022
Goldsmiths College London, BA Fine Art and Contemporary Critical Theory 2002
Solo exhibitions
Autonomous Zone, off-site with Sid Motion Gallery, London 2021
No Parts Can Leave Yard Without Payment, Peckham 24, London 2019
A Kind of Solid Liquid, Sid Motion Gallery, London 2018
Photo London, Solo booth in Discovery section with Sid Motion Gallery, London 2018
Solid Liquid, Safehouse 2 for Peckham 24, London 2018
Matter Out of Place, Sid Motion Gallery, London 2017
Your Feet in the Air and your Head on the Ground, Peckham 24, London 2017? Cropped Up, AMP Gallery, London 2016
Selected group exhibitions
RCA WIP Show 2021, online
Sluice Exchange, The Institut fu¨r Alles Mo¨gliche, Berlin
Yes Please, curated by George & Jorgen, London
Chroma, curated by Lilly Brooks, London
Art Licks, curated by Holly Willats, ICA, London
Stardust Boogie Woogie, Monica Bobinska Gallery, London
Spartacus Chetwynd's Helmut Newton Ladies Night, The Royal Academy of Arts, London
NOAC Juried group exhibition selected by Gavin Turk, Chichester, UK
Sight Insight, curated by Kate Groobey and Avis Underwood, Asylum, London
Projects and Residencies
Artists self-published book, I touched this with my hand, I touched that with my eye, essay by David Campany. 2020
Peckham 24 Photo Festival co-founder and creative director 2016 - current. AMP Gallery, artist lead gallery, co-founder and curator 2015 - 2018
Asylum, not-for-profit art space, co-founder 2010 - current
Artist in residence at Castello Di Monticello d’Alba, 2018
Pexmass, commissioned artist 2014
The Surgery, artist lead projects, facilitating artist 2008 - 2014
Bibliography
A Corner With, A Corner of home with Jo Dennis, edited by Trine Stephensen and Joanna Cresswell
‘YARD’ and ‘A Day with Jo Dennis’ Online - Unseen Platform, April 2019
Liz Jobey, ‘ Memories are made of this’ FT Weekend Magazine, May 2018 pp. 24-27
Liz Jobey, ‘Lost and Found, the transformative art of Jo Dennis’ Online FT Magazine, May 2018
Paul Carey-Kent, ‘Photo London 2018’ Photo Monitor, online June 2018
Mark Westall, ‘Peckham 24 a three-day festival for international contemporary photography’ FAD Magazine. May 2018
Izabela Radwanska Zhang ‘Live and Direct with Peckham 24’ BJP online May 2018
Jose Da Silva ‘Peckham 24 leads the way as the UK capital gets snappy’ The Art Newspaper, May 2018
Festival: Peckham 24 returns on 19/20 May, British Journal of Photography Online, May 2017
‘A Review of Peckham 24 in Peckham’, Arteviste, June 2017
Maisie Skidmore, Art and Photography ‘AnOther’ Magazine, May 2017
Mark McGinlay. 'Designs on the derelict', Peckham Peculiar London, Feb 2014 Frontpage
Art Licks Magazine, Issue 5. Cover image and Studio Snoop, 2011
