Common Wealth investigates the relationship between word and image through the work of five artists living in the United Kingdom. This is a unique opportunity to see exciting new work from abroad ranging from the humorous to the ironic, from the poetic to the absurd, and from the light-hearted to the dark.

Amanda Beech makes artworks, writes and collaborates on curatorial projects. Her work explores the relationship between democracy and violence in neo-liberalism by scrutinising the forceful rhetoric within narratives of freedom, which play out in philosophy, politics, literature and popular culture. Constructing narratives that take in particular biographies, sites, social mythologies and mixing them with the bounds of philosophical inquiry, her work operates as a space of seductive power, will and force – a world that emphasises decisiveness as its guiding principle and that deals with our share in it. Beech is Course Director of MA Critical Writing and Curatorial Practice, Wimbledon and Chelsea Colleges of Art and a Director of The Political Currency of Art Research Group (based at Goldsmiths College, University of London).

Giorgio Sadotti (B. 20th Century, Manchester, based in London) gained his MFA at University of Syracuse, New York (1981); MA Sculpture, Manchester University (1979); and his BA Fine Art at Trent Polytechnic (1978). Sadotti has exhibited internationally in solo and group exhibitions for over twenty years. In 2006, Sadotti had a solo exhibition at the Henry Moore Institute and has work in the collection of the Tate.

Bob and Roberta Smith was born in London, UK, where he lives and works. He received his BA from the University of Reading and his MA from Goldsmith College. Smith’s witty and bold work is rooted in conversation and debate. His diverse practice often manifests itself in performance, which is infused with a subversive humour. He also creates text pieces that emulate the language of protest or political sloganeering. Hand painted on scrap materials or directly onto the wall, the colourful work has a DIY aesthetic that has an immediate appeal. The sometimes flippant tone of the statements belies a genuine belief that art can act as an agency to promote change. Smith was included most recently in the exhibition, Altermodern, at Tate Britain, London, curated by Nicolas Bourriaud.

David Alker is based in Manchester, England. He studied Fine Art and History of Art at the University of Leeds and the combination of these disciplines has continued to inform his view of practice. He has taught and been a visiting speaker at a number of colleges and universities in the UK and has worked at the University of Central Lancashire since 1985. He is the Programme Leader for Fine Art in the School of Creative and Performing Arts. Although he trained as a painter his practice now involves a range of media including constructed text, installation and painting. He is interested in narrative structures and film. Since 1995 he has been working with found and reassembled texts and these have been inscribed onto the pages of books, plastered across the walls as posters and displayed on windows in public sites. In a series of recent works he repositions the dialogue of horror and new wave films onto post-it notes.

Denise Hawrysio was born in Toronto and currently lives in London, UK. She received her BFA from Queen’s University, Canada, and her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. She works in a variety of media including site-specific installation and print and has exhibited her work throughout Europe, the United States and Canada. She has recently curated and exhibited at Overgaden, Institute of Contemporary Art, Copenhagen, Denmark. For this exhibition, Hawrysio has re-cast a 1987 Spotlight directory which evokes the spirit of surrealist collage, embracing Andre Breton’s definition of Surrealism as a disruptive “juxtaposition of two or more or less disparate realities” however she takes this idea of the disturbing ‘third’ image a few steps further by combining a larger succession of fragmentary images together. She is presently teaching at University of British Columbia.