Michael Curran

Ascension opens this weekend at The Koppel Project, Piccadilly. With performances by Michael Curran and Alex Schady at the Opening on Saturday 6 January and the Finissage on Friday 12 January.

"Pissing in the river, watching it rise”. 

Not The Ascension of Christ disappearing into the clouds nor the earthly ascension of the human from the primaeval swamp. They were ascendancies over the mortal or lesser life forms, stories of transcendence, of rising above and beyond. Evolution as a struggle for verticality, of the intellectually, and spiritually, upwardly mobile Homo Erectus, ending with Elon Musk ejaculating himself into space. 

This ascension is that of the warm piss rising in the river, of fireworks and fountains, not defying or mastering gravity but as an anti-gravitas. A form of levitas as a tactic to resist the dead weight of academia, the mortis of rigour. Ascension is a position against the instrumental, the useful or the valuable. It is pure expenditure, the release of weights, it is what goes up in smoke.

The exhibition will feature work by Rolina Blok, Lewis G. Burton, Leigh Clarke, Michael Curran, Gordon Hon, Marc Hulson, Joseph Icaro, Kelly Large, Trish Lyons, Louisa Minkin, Ted Rogers, Yana Ryan, Alex Shady, John Seth, Mia Taylor, Chan-Chu Wang.

PV: 6 January, 5-8pm

Open: 7-12 January, 1-6pm

Closing Event: 12 January, 5-8pm (Also featuring a performance by Michael Curran and Alex Schady)

Koppel 180°

177-180 Piccadilly London W1J 9ER