Whack & Blight 2021

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Whack & Blight is an exhibition of preliminary works for a longer term art/poetry project of Kit Kelen's, titled CALLIGRAPHATE!: a forest of words concerning the forest. 

In this show, ink and mixed media (mainly black and white) bring text and image into a close, and sometimes uncomfortable, proximity. Klee's line taken for an extended walk, these works of Kit Kelen's recreate a kind of primeval proto-writing, a struggle to and from meaning as it is conventionally expressed. Doodle, scribble, scratch and spill - these are the everyday accidents causing the marks seen on the unframed paper works here on the wall. Every reader/viewer will experience a different journey in these beginnings of a forest-to-come back. Puns aside, whacking and blighting is what capital and governments in the pockets of capital are currently doing to wreck the planet. Kit Kelen's work has us think about this. 

Published widely since the seventies, Christopher (Kit) Kelen has a dozen full length collections in English as well as translated books of poetry in Chinese, Portuguese, French, Italian, Spanish, Indonesian, Swedish, Norwegian and Filipino. His latest volume of poetry in English is Poor Man's Coat - Hardanger Poems, published by UWAP in 2018. Kelen has had ten solo painting exhibitions over the last fifteen years: in Macao, Sweden, Portugal and Australia. His most recent show was _up through branches/por árvores acima _held at the Sociedade Nacional de Belas Artes in Lisbon in 2017. 

This exhibition is a benefit for FLYING ISLANDS PRESS. All small (unframed) works are priced at $100 and all proceeds from sales go to the press to enable the continuation of the series (currently around 80 titles produced over the last ten years).

Covid-safety

Covid-19 safe procedures operate at the gallery. We record names for contact tracing, supply hand sanitiser, disinfect our surfaces and have only 25 people in the gallery at a time, applying social distancing.