Department of Artistic Affairs - Issue 001

More in this magazine

• Issue No. 001 DEPARTMENT OF ARTISTIC AFFAIRS JUNE 2026Elephant Vision Lab In Excess
• Page 2PAGE 1
• The first edition of Department of ArtisticAffairs reflects on our recent open call concerning the subject of Excess, not simply as abundance, but as structure, behaviour, atmosphere, and method. We live in a world where excess has become a familiar condition. As humans, we possess a remarkable talent for collecting, compiling, producing, accumulating, storing, cataloguing, and occasionally forgetting why we began in the first place. Whether driven by pleasure, desire, financial gain, curiosity, or political ambition, our instinct is often towards more.
• FUEL PUMP 20 ND 3 STRDB'B FUEL 5 COCK STR B'B FWD
• INTERNAL AFFAIRSInto the Atom: Wings Aviation Museum NTRANCE
• RAF No. 76 SquadronOperation Grapple Y: Thermonuclear Testing and Airborne Sampling Military
• 3D DATA SCULPTURE BY LILIS LAB00 Mushroom Cloud (Data Sculpture)
• EJECTION SEATSVIDEO SILLS FROM ZHENGHAN HUANG VIDEO SILLS FROM ZHENGHAN HUANG
• Page 9N Nuclear
• MATTERS OF ARTISTIC IMPORTANCEGroup Show: In Excess (13th-17th May) Location: Studio 1 LOCKSIDE STUDIOS, BREAM STREET, E3 2NT
• Page 11
• Instagram: @vicxxciiiAmberstiche is a moving image work that brings together filmed performance and digital environments, creating a slow, atmospheric space where movement fades into stillness and presence lingers in transition. Through repeated gestures and layered imagery, the work connects to ideas of excess as something that builds over time. The accumulation of bodies, movements, and digital traces creates a sense of saturation, where nothing fully disappears or resolves. Instead, the figures remain held in a state that feels both still and ongoing. The idea of excess is also reflected VICTORIA GONG
• Instagram: @05laboThis work reconstructs the outer shell of an antique wooden chair. The original chair was tightly wrapped in acrylic; once hardened, the acrylic skin was removed and reassembled. What remains is a transparent structure-like the shed skin of a snake retaining the form but emptied of its substance. The chair, one of the most intimate objects in relation to the body, normally supports weight and defines posture within space. Here, however, it refuses function. The absence of the seated body becomes more present than the object itself. The act of wrapping YOUNGSUK OH
• Instagram: @jacksandersartDamaged wires (2026) brings together a pile of household wires that have been replaced due to damage but retained because they continue to function intermittently. No longer relied upon, these objects occupy a secondary status, kept in reserve rather than discarded. The work emerges from this condition of partial utility, where objects exist between use and obsolescence. Through accumulation, it reflects a tendency to JACK SANDERS Damaged Wires (2026)
• Instagram: @noahmashiakA geometric painting representing the raising heat of a fever. Pyrexia - Acrylic on canvas 16 x 12 inches NOAH MASHIAK
• Instagram: @harsh_art03Playhouse - Oil on Canvas 90 X 120 X 4 cm
• Page 17DELL Instagram: @maxladams
• Page 18Improvisational patchwork quilt composed with from hand sublimation prints from defamiliarised consumer detritus, dendritic packaging materials, baby tomato stems, fast JOSIE RAE TURNBULL
• Instagram: @shoe.king.liangThis digital photographic work shows the self as layered, repeated, and shifting. Using accumulation, it explores how identity is shaped through excess. The images suggest that focusing too much. XUEQING LIANG
• Instagram: @gigi_zyxEchoes and Reflections - print on paper and projection - 210 x 297 millimetres x 2 + two projectors. In my research on the self representational work of female photographers, I was intrigued by their use of mirrors. I wanted to explore to what extent a mirror can
• Instagram: @wendiw.art + @janetliuu_uMasking Mixed media handcrafted masks using plaster, fabric, faux fur, vegetable-tanned leather, feathers, flowers, pearls, beads and paint - 40 x 60 cm Masks: Surface in Excess consists of three enlarged handcrafted masks exploring the repeated construction of a performed self. The work responds to narcissistic dynamics through the idea of masking: the continuous need
• Page 22HIT & RUN is a one-day exhibition built around movement, momentum, and temporary takeover. Across three consecutive days, the space will completely transform each day. Artists arrive in the morning, install work in the space, exhibit throughout the day, meet audiences and other artists during an evening viewing, then deinstall the same night. HIT & RUN leans into the energy of the temporary pop up culture: A show that appears quickly, takes over, and disappears again. An encounter that only exists if you were there for it. Participating artists will be programmed into one of the two days based on shared themes, visual conversations, and connections between submitted works.
• Page 2311 Gigi Zhang is a London-based artist from China whose interdisciplinary practice spans photography, video, and contemporary art.
• Page 24You studied philosophy and music before pursuing photography. How do these disciplines continue to shape your artistic practice today? The more I do photography, the more I realise that philosophy is an essential way of thinking and looking at things embedded in me. When I first started photography after graduating from a philosophy undergrad study, I was trying to solve the philosophical questions I had in mind through a photographic approach. I gradually realised that the visual provides things that cannot be explicated by text. After I finished my graduate show in photography, I decided not to set a question that guided me through the work, but rather to follow my intuition and take pictures. However, my philosophical way of thinking can never get out of my head. If an image can be articulated by text, then the image loses its meaning. At this stage, I've been trying to put together images and text in a way that neither exploits the other.
• Page 25Having lived in China, New York, and London, how have different cultural environments influenced your understanding of the self? When I first returned home to Kunming after years in New York, I realised that I didn't belong there as fully as I had expected. No matter how strong the nostalgia had been, the way I think and feel had already been shaped by the places I had lived. I found myself constantly searching for a new sense of belonging-something that wasn't completely Kunming or New York.
• Page 26The complex relationship between the self and the mirror has thus become a journey of exploration. In a world increasingly mediated by images and screens, do you think our relationship with ourselves has fundamentally changed?
• Title: Echo of EchoYear: 2025 Artists: Xin Yue Ma & Alexander Collinson Medium: Clay, metal, wood, audio Dimensions: H300cm, x W200cm x D400cm
• Page 28ECHO OF ECHO ECHO OF ECHO
• CREDITS ZHENGHAN HUANGBalancing linear form with material fracture, the piece becomes a meditation on the way memory is both preserved and eroded by the very processes that seek to hold it. It occupies a space between presence and absence, between the organic and the industrial, between nowhere and the moment of encounter, where nothing can be done to stop change, yet everything is shaped by it. CREDITS ZHENGHAN HUANG
• Issue No. 001Issue No. 001 DEPARTMENT OF ARTISTIC AFFAIRS JUNE 2026 Elephant Vision Lab