LONDON.- Tiwani Contemporary announces African Industrial Revolution, a project by e-studio Luanda. e-studio Luanda is an artist collective and studio complex founded in 2012 in the Angolan capital by Francisco Vidal, Rita GT, António Ole and Nelo Teixeira. The collective has played an instrumental role in fostering the visual arts scene in Luanda, producing regular exhibitions and running an art education programme. Vidal and Teixeira are part of the official selection for the Angolan Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale, commissioned by Rita GT. The gallery recently announced its representation of Vidal.

A.I.R. is the collective’s first exhibition in the UK, taking the form of an open studio within Tiwani Contemporary’s space. The overall aim of the project is to release a work of art directly into a system that depends on digital and analog ideas around free reproduction and distribution, investigating how information is disseminated today.

Transforming the gallery space into a temporary artist studio, the first week of the project will be punctuated by daily sessions, during which the artists will activate the U.topia Machine and produce work in-situ. The U.topia Machine is a 60 x 60 cm plywood box containing an all-in-one toolkit for producing work. The machine was born out of e-studio’s own experience of international mobility (Rita GT and Francisco Vidal moved to Luanda in 2012 and recently returned to Lisbon), and the challenges this has brought about. How to continue making work with limited access to space, resources and materials? Beyond operational constraints, the question that surfaced and has since animated much of the collective’s artistic output was: how to translate artistic practices from one geographical context to another?

A.I.R. forms part of e-studio Luanda’s ongoing exploration of the condition of the post-modern, peripatetic and itinerant artist. Effectively functioning as a mobile studio, the project envisions a system of art making and exhibiting that is no longer tied in with a sense of place, and highlights the status of the artist as an international worker. In a move to unite artistic forms with utilitarian intentions, A.I.R. borrows from the legacy of Constructivist and Bauhaus artists, whose taste for social experiment and revolutionary politics through art and design have evidently inspired e-studio.

Imitating the internet’s ability freely to reproduce, distribute, borrow and share ideas, the artists are creating work that sits within the emerging concept of what has come to be defined as post-internet art. Whilst much of the dialogue around the genre has so far taken place in Europe and North America, e-studio's residency at Tiwani Contemporary will create the opportunity to widen the geographical perspective to this discourse.

Rita GT
Rita GT was born in Porto in 1980. She lives and works in Luanda, Angola. Rita GT gained a BA in Communication Design (2004) from the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Porto and an MA in Fine Arts from Malmö Art Academy – Lund University in Malmö, Sweden. Solo exhibitions include: Instituto Camões, Luanda (2014); UNAP, Luanda (2012); Bienal de Viana do Castelo (2010); Empty Cube, Lisbon (2009); Gallery Reflexus, Porto (2009); and PêSSEGOpráSEMANA, Porto (2007). Group exhibitions include: KunstKraftWerk, Leipzig & Freies Museum/Savvy Contemporary, Berlin (2015); SOSO Contemporary African Art Gallery, Luanda (2012); Museum of the City, Lisbon (2011); CCB – Museu Berardo, Lisbon (2009); Arte Contempo, Lisbon (2007); Natural History Museum, Lisbon (2007); and the Rothschild Prize (2007), Lisbon. Rita GT is the commissioner for this year’s Angolan Pavilion at the Venice Biennale.

Francisco Vidal
Francisco Vidal was born in Lisbon in 1978. He is Portuguese, Angolan and Cape Verdean. Vidal lives and works in Luanda, Angola, and holds an MFA from Columbia University School of the Arts in New York. Recent solo exhibitions include: Instituto Camões, Luanda (2014); UNAP, Luanda (2012); and Galeria 111, Lisbon and Porto (2007). Group exhibitions include: Angolan Pavilion, 56th Venice Biennale (2015); Expo Milan (2015); KunstKraftWerk, Leipzig & Freies Museum/Savvy Contemporary, Berlin (2015); National Museum of Natural History, Luanda (2013); SOSO Contemporary African Art Gallery, Luanda (2012); Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon (2011); Fisher Landau Center for the Arts, Long Island (2011); EDP Foundation, Lisbon (2010); Lux, Lisbon (2010); and Instituto Camões in Cape Verde, Angola and Mozambique (2007). His work is represented in public collections including the EDP Foundation, PLMJ Foundation and Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, as well as private collections. Vidal's first solo exhibition in the UK will take place at Tiwani Contemporary in November 2015.