Heritage is a Bogus History

Ross Jardine

3rd June – 3rd July 2011
Exhibition Opening: Thursday 3rd June 2011, 6-9pm

It should of course be noted that this image of of the English countryside, ‘a bucolic vision of an ordered, comforting, peaceful and, above all, deferential past’ is constructed, comprised of elements that never existed together historically. To mark the occasion of the opening of ANDOR’s new gallery space in Hackney, East London, London based artist Ross Jardine’s exhibition ‘Heritage is a Bogus History’ begins a new series of monthly exhibitions.

Jardine’s programme for the exhibition features a nostalgic return for the artist to an iconic period of relatively recent British music history. Returning to one of the most infamous and influential sites and moments of the 1990’s UK rave scene, Castle Morton in 1992, the actions and recordings of the artist provide a continuation of the history of the landscape. The artist’s performances strive to construct an alternative perspective of a site’s influence, questioning the manner in which a collective gathering appropriates the landscape and affects its symbolic representation. In creating his own dub plates Jardine repeatedly plays the audio of interviews of key figures from the event at Castle Morton repetitively on location until their degradation. Employing technologies of the time in a destructive action in the landscape of their origin, a similar action and consequence that the original event experienced; bringing in the Criminal Justice Bill eventually leading to the scene’s own demise.

In contrast to the scale of influence associated with the gathering at Castle Morton Jardine is recreating in the gallery space a night spent with a small group of friends at Effingham Scout Hut in his youth. A night long performative event and a homage to the significance of a small hut in a small town in Surrey.

‘CLASSIC EVENTS’

CASSOULET: Friday 10 June 2011, 6 – 11pm
SMILEY RAVE FACE: Wednesday 15 June, 2011, 6 – 11pm
EFFINGHAM SCOUT HUT: Saturday 2nd July 2011 10pm- late