Malgras|Naudet, Crusader Mill, 66-72 Chapeltown Street, Manchester, M1 2WH.

Opening / Sculpture with Performances
Friday 19th July 2013
6 – 9pm

Sculpture Post – Performances
20th – 21st July 2013
12 – 6pm

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Malgras|Naudet is pleased to present, The First Oxo Conference, curated by gallery member, Daniel Fogarty, as part of our summer 2013 programme, feat. Patrick Coyle, Tom Jenks, Holly Pester and Mark Reid.

Using the word ‘Oxo’ as a tool to look at language (objectively?), and the context of conferences as a format of presentation, ‘The First Oxo Conference’ is an evening of performances, and a weekend of what remains of their sculptural backdrop, that in one way or another relate to the word ‘Oxo’ and its many attributes both formally and linguistically.

The conference is hinged on ‘Oxo’; its physical suggestion of a rudimentary face (two eyes and a nose), its reading as an algorithm, a game of noughts and crosses, a set of orifices where food goes in and shit comes out, an equation or a brand name for a beef or vegetable extract. Throughout the evening the word ‘Oxo’ will be used as a clothes-horse, a device on which to hang a range of new and existing performance works by Patrick Coyle, Tom Jenks, Holly Pester and Mark Reid. Taking the format of a conference (after all, is an exhibition not too static and a meeting not too informal?), the evening brings together a range of performers whose work approaches language from a formal and / or potentially skewed perspective. There is an ‘Oxo’ Tower that looms over all of us, and not just as a backdrop to the Thames.

The speakers have been invited by Daniel Fogarty to perform in front of his vision of an ‘Oxo’ backdrop (…not the Tower), a new sculptural work by Fogarty consisting of a large sheet of hand-dyed material covered in the letters ‘o’ and ‘x’ falling in and out of formation, spanning the width of the gallery. The sculpture sits awkwardly between a nomadic tent and a promotional stand functioning as a backdrop, a temporary piece of architecture, against which the conference’s performances take place. Constructed with the potential for it to be flat-packed and moved from venue to venue, conference to conference, the sculpture / backdrop aims to act as a part of the performance / conference as much as a wall would. It is a passive agent, something like a prompt, prop or post-match analysis backdrop (with great bouncebackability), brought in and out of audience and gallery perspective with a range of text and performance-based works.

The weekend aims to point a finger (pick your ‘Oxo’ expression to match now), if only for a second, in the right or wrong direction, towards the temporary nature of graphical, spoken and written language.

www.danielfogarty.co.uk
www.malgrasnaudet.tumblr.com

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Notes to Editors.
Daniel Fogarty is a Manchester-based artist whose current project is Another Television Ident, presented by VINYL : SITE, Birmingham. Past shows include IDENTS, Cornerhouse, Manchester; Held, Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool; The Manchester Contemporary, Manchester. Please contact Helen Collett at malgrasnaudet@gmail.com for further information.

Membership.
To find out more about Malgras|Naudet and become a member, please visitwww.malgrasnaudet.tumblr.com/membership.