I don’t know much about this JaffaCakesTLV show, but Know Hope is involved, so I’ll be checking it out.
Here’s the press release:
Very little of the groundbreaking art created in Israel in the last decade responded directly to [the political unrest], either because artists felt powerless to change a harsh reality, or because they chose to adopt a universalist stance in an attempt to rise above the purely local.” (Amitai Mendelsohn, Real Time: Art in Israel: 1998-2008, 2008).
The first ever exhibition in the UK devoted to contemporary art from Tel Aviv will open on April 16 as a pop-up exhibition in Kenny Schachter’s Rove Gallery. 33-34 Hoxton Square. Examining one of the most interesting, yet unexplored, groups of practicing artists today, JaffaCakes TLV will showcase works by seven artists who are inspired by the diversity and vibrancy of modern-day Tel Aviv. Although artists from Tel Aviv have started to gain attention in the United States and Europe, they have not been shown as a group in the UK until now.
Entitling the show after the well-loved biscuits is a play on words. Its familiarity provides the perfect combination of mundane and mischievous, yet it references a geographical location. Jaffa, one of the oldest ports in the world has become the centre of Israel’s fringe culture; it is youthful, daring and avant-garde. Like Tel Aviv-Jaffa, a city of contradictions, the works in JaffaCakes TLV are beguiling; a multitude of layers slowly reveals an underlying sense of mystery and fantasy.
The exhibition is inspired by renowned short story writer and Camera D’Or winner Etgar Keret. His stories “fuse the banal with the surreal, shot through with a dark, tragicomic sensibility and casual, comic-strip violence.” (The Observer, 13 February 2005). Within the recognisable streets and neighborhoods of Tel Aviv, Keret depicts conventional modern life with injections of irregularity that lead its viewers to question their preconceived notions of reality.The catalogue will feature a short story by Etgar Keret while the artists on show explore and reflect this notion of the uncanny in their work.
For more information, images and artists CVs please email info@jaffacakesTLV.com.