Jesse Ash - Avoidance-Avoidance

The script for, and conversations around, artist Jesse Ash's multi-dimensional project built around a play about a bitter argument between two ex-lovers.

Avoidance--Avoidance is a multi-dimensional project built around a play about a bitter argument between two ex-lovers. The project incorporates artworks which act as props, set pieces, and stage, and as individual artworks in their own right. Brought together through an evolving script, the narrative unfolds to reveal a multiplicity of secrets through an ongoing, interrogative dialogue. The individual artworks act both as backdrops to, and reflections on this repetitive exercise in extracting and concealing information. The culmination of which shines a light on public and private forms of disclosure within a contemporary context of state and commercial surveillance.

Bringing together material from each iteration of the project, spanning multiple continents and languages--including annotated and translated scripts, rehearsal and performance stills, studio sketches and intricate newspaper collages--the book explores the theme of transparency in emotional, material and political terms.

The project is introduced through a text by curator Elsa Coustou. Conversations with actor Ansu Kabia, writer Peter Pomerantsev, and artist Daniel Sinsel consider issues such as "performed" intimacy, troll farms, and trompe l'oeil through the lens of the Avoidance--Avoidance project.

Jesse Ash is a tutor in painting at The Royal College of Art, London. He works within a range of media to explore perspectives on political history. Looking at how events are framed, presented, and circulated, his work addresses the emotional, psychological, and geographic distances that lie between the individual and the political environment that surrounds us.