Giles Bailey & Jeremiah Day Exhibition

In the work of Giles Bailey and Jeremiah Day, language is a fundamental preoccupation. Words appear not just as images of signs but as a means to integrate poetics, narrative, description and exposition into visual art practice. Presented in juxtaposition and dialogue, the two complimentary but distinct practices will reflect upon each other and offer a glimpse into one of the important currents in contemporary art, namely the return of what was once unfashionable and taboo: narrative.

Giles Bailey works largely with performance, writing or strategically appropriating texts that he performs himself. These works are often conceived to propose alternative approaches to the assembling of histories and set archival footage, narrative video or particular images against experiments with language. Increasingly, he works closely with others to facilitate collaborations in order to explore these themes and is developing longer pieces of experimental writing. At CCA, Bailey will present installed versions of two works shown previously as performances – I Bought a Little City, a collage of short, quasi-fictions performed as monologues and collaboratively produced videos, and The Chemical History of a Candle, a choreographed performance inspired by a brief moment in a video shot by Laure Prouvost featuring John Latham and Michael Faraday's 1861 book of lectures for young people, after which the piece was named.

Jeremiah Day’s work employs photography, speech, and improvisational movement. In his performances and installations, questions of site and historical memory are explored through fractured narrative and image. In a personal and idiosyncratic form of realism, Day appropriates historical incident to serve as metaphor and exemplification. Works including If You Want Blood - a long-term mixed-media research project, comprising performance, photography, sculpture, video and text, which looks at the post-wall history of Checkpoint Bornholmer Strasse - and The Fall of the Twelve Acres Museum - an investigation into the legacy of a 1976 lawsuit in which a Native American tribe, the Wampanoag Indians, attempted to reclaim some of their traditional land - will form part of the exhibition.

Accompanying events include a film programme selected by the artists, and a performance and publication launch by Giles Bailey.