For #Five2Watch this week we've selected five artists who've made work with notions of sport in mind: Sophie Warren & Jonathan Mosley, Marc Renshaw, Amelia Hawk, Dana Sychugova and Philip Kennedy.
Rogue Game, First Play, Casco Utrecht, in collaboration with Can Altay, 2011
Sophie Warren & Jonathan Mosley
ROGUE GAME
Event
Seek out an indoor sports hall with markings of at least three different game courts or pitches overlaid.
Enlist teams of players for each game.
Assemble the players on court dressed to indicate team and game.
At the whistle, simultaneously all games begin.
Each game is played for its duration.
Characteristics of Rogue Game –
playing amongst obstacles / advance and advantage / negotiation / collision / fracturing of order / stalling / stops / starts / feinting / indecision / clashes between balls / swapping of games by players / interruption / rhythm and counter-rhythm / synchronization / syncopation / redundancy / non-accidentals / contra-action / contingent moves – liable but not certain to happen
Proposition No. 17
Jonathan Mosley and Sophie Warren with Can Altay
Autumn 2007
Participating teams:
Amazone Utrecht – basketball team
Cangeroes – basketball team
Vlerk Homovolleybal Utrecht – volleyball team
Casco – volleyball team
Odysseus 91 – student soccer team
Hercules- student soccer team
Location: Sportcentrum Olympos, Utrecht
Date: 11 September, 2011
The Sporting League Statistics Detail, 2013
'Bayerns', 'Tranquilayers', 'Universo Collunteen' and 'Pointeso' may sound like international football teams but in fact belong to a fictional football super league. The Sporting League was formed in 1985 when Renshaw developed an interest in the production of league tables and statistics. Since 2002, the artist has transcribed the resulting data using biro on paper from each season, thus reflecting a lifelong archive of hopes, fears and dreams.
The champions of 2011 – 2012 season were Pointeso.
The league is currently located in the 2012-2013 season. Pointeso are currently at the top of the table.
Renshaw works in various media in which drawing forms a pivotal component. He researches the relationship between drawing, its broad application as a tool for communication and its ability to resonate on an intuitive level.
His practice is responsive to questioning and examining perceived boundaries between fiction, reality and imagination. His ongoing research draws partially on Marc Augue’s analysis of modern life as highlighted in Non-Places, An Introduction to Supermodernity.’ (1995).
The Milky Way, 2016
The performance installation explores the many layers of control within the prison system and wider society through the coded exchange of consumables, which are suffused with propaganda and act as forms of soft control by prison officers. Using the form of a football match, the characters of Coffee and Milk, which are taken from a 1930’s propaganda campaign, confront each other on a constructed pitch. The movement of the players on the pitch is commentated on by a pair of opera singers, who relay the game based on a shifting vocal score. The sounds produced by the commentators flatten the hierarchy of language, taking away the power given to words that direct attention, agenda and action.
Untitled (Soviet sports) 2, 2017
Digital collage
Wallie, 2006 - 2010
Originally created in 2006, the photos illustrate the re-installation at my 2010 'Really' exhibition. The work explores football aesthetics with a focus on contrasting geometric form and pattern with random action and physical material.
Published 6 May 2022