MARK LECKEY: DUBPLATE

IN THE PROJECT ROOM:
BEATRIZ MONTEAVARO: WHEN YOU WISH UPON A STAR

September 25th-October 20th, 2003
Opening reception: September 25th @ 8 pm

So, you wake up one morning and it’s impossible to
avoid the fact that things no longer add up. The
London you live in is different from the London in the
movies. Yours neither swings nor swims in its newfound
coolness. Yours was founded in the grimy 80s, when you
learned that music could be made in the bedroom and
your unemployed mates, with an impeccable sense of
irony, decide to wear Le Coq Sprotif sweat suits.
Someone called them “the casuals,” but you knew
better. They were dole dandies, as careful and savvy
in organizing their look as Oscar Wilde had once been.
And you never went to soapsuds parties at glitzy
clubs. It was all Blues parties down at Brixton with
the kids from Jamaica.
Dubplate, Mark Leckey’s new show at LOCUST PROJECTS,
commemorates those parties. Leckey has built a
monstrous tower of speakers, equipped with four amps
(4000 watts) that may just bring the building down.
Mean and gigantic, Soundsystem comes with a dubplate
of London ambient sound recorded around Soho and
homemade music. An important aspect of this project is
the possibility of exploiting its functional side. It
should be used, like the sound systems that inspired
it, in social events. Expect booty bass parties,
bootleg movie screenings and all sorts of other
inspired events during the run of the show.

The London that 80s has-been and over-medicated fiend
Adam Ant lives in must surely be different than the
one we take for granted. For her show in the project
room, When You Wish Upon a Star, Beatriz Monteavaro
engages in another idiosyncratic investigation of Ant
that pushes infatuation to the point where it gets
really interesting and scary. A selection of Ant
posters will be accompanied by an immense drawing that
provides instructions on how to build an Antship, the
craft that will wisk Ant away from all his earthly
woes. Monteavaro will also build the cockpit of the
ship, a fantastic jerry-rigged crystallization of her
little boy/starry-eyed infatuated girl imagination and
her first attempt at large-scale sculpture.

LECKEY ARTICLE

LOCUST PROJECTS is sponsored, in part, by The Dade
Community Foundation with support of The Miami-Dade
County Dept of Cultural Affairs, The Cultural Affairs
Council, The Mayor, and The Miami-Dade Board of County
Commissioners.