Carolyn Lazard, Sam Lipp, Adrian Piper, Donald Rodney: Civic Duty

Cell Project Space presents Civic Duty, a group exhibition that examines public life defined by its prohibitions and exclusions, bringing together a selection of intergenerational artists that investigate or draw from various marginalised positions to explore broader social and political ground. It comments on the mundane violence of institutional care and welfare structures that produce the administration of social control, rendering the body either necessarily functional or silenced, ignored and erased.
 

Carolyn Lazard (b. 1987, USA) artist/writer lives and works in Philadelphia. Recent group exhibitions include the current Whitney Biennial, New York (2019), and Body Electric, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, USA (2019), Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon, New Museum, New York (2017). Solo projects and two person exhibitions include If you can’t share no one gets any, LUX London (2018), Epigenetic, Juliana Huxtable and Carolyn Lazard, Shoot the Lobster, New York (2018). In April 2019 Triple Canopy launched Lazard’s second publication The World Unknown.

Sam Lipp (b. 1989, UK) lives and works in New York City. Solo exhibitions include Incest, Bonny Poon, Paris (2019), Bodega, New York (2016), Abandonment, Central Fine, Miami (2015) and I’m An American Citizen, I Know My Rights, Neochrome, Turin (2015). His work was included in the survey Michael Jackson: On The Wall, National Portrait Gallery, London (2018), Grand Palais, Paris (2018), Bundeskunthalle, Bonn (2019) and has appeared in group shows including In the hopes of not being considered Kate Werble Gallery, New York (2017), Aunt Nancy Night Gallery, Los Angeles (2016), Great Depression Balice Hertling, Paris (2016). Lipp is co-founder and director of Queer Thoughts, New York.

Adrian Piper (b. 1948, USA) is an artist and philosopher based in Berlin (DE). Her acclaimed retrospective Adrian Piper: A Synthesis of Intuitions, 1965-2016 appeared at The Museum of Modern Art, New York in 2018 along with solo exhibition Adrian Piper: The Mythic Being at MAMCO, Geneva (October 2017-February 2018). Piper’s work has appeared in major museums and public institutions worldwide since 1969 and in 2015 she won the Golden Lion in the International Exhibition of the 56th Venice Biennale. Acclaimed published essays by Piper, are Out of Order, Out of Sight: Selected Writings in Meta-Art and Art Criticism, 1967-1992, 2 vols. (MIT Press, 1996) and Escape to Berlin: A Travel Memoir (Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin, 2018).

Donald Rodney (b. 1961-1998, UK) was a leading figure in Britain’s BLK Art Group during the 1980’s. A retrospective of his work Re-imaging Donald Rodney, was presented at Vivid Projects, Birmingham (UK) 2016 and selected for British Art Show 5 in 2000. His solo exhibitions include 9 Nights in El Dorado South London Gallery (1997), and Crisis Chisenhale Gallery (1989). Selected group exhibitions include Truth, Dare, Double Dare Ikon Gallery, Birmingham (1994), Body Visual The Barbican Centre, London (1996) and Representing the Body in Contemporary Art and Society, Welcome Trust, London (1996). In 1996 he received the Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for Sculpture. Rodney’s collection of works and archive material are held by Tate Gallery Collections.

Thanks to Mike Phillips and the estate of Donald Rodney.

Developed with the generous support of Arts Council England, Marpac LLC, Cockayne and the London Community Foundation.