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Alex Margo Arden
When pushed for an explanation on her work, Alex Margo Arden suggests it might resemble “Sally Bowles understudying Norma Desmond playing Anne Boleyn in a school play about a Drunk Girl Ruining A Wedding.” Which might be a bit confusing for those unaware of Alex’s work, but gets to the heart of the recent Goldsmiths graduate’s interest in performance, visibility, substitution, layers and acting. She’s been busy since graduating in 2016, taking to New York to do a residency, performing at the ICA, and presenting an installation at VFDalston for World AIDS Day. Next up is a show in Leeds in May. Part of a new gen of artists emerging from south London tackling radical queer theory in their work, and providing the politically engaged artistic charge we need in the world right now.
Text Felix Petty
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Jenkin Van Zyl
Jenkin van Zyl’s creative awakening came at age 11, the first time he raided his mum’s make-up bag, put on a wig and enacted a drag version of EastEnders. The Slade School of Fine Art graduate creates mesmerisingly visceral short films shown within installations and sculptures that “are like escapees from the films.” His erotically charged works are like Vaudevillesque horror performances — albeit ones exploring complex transgressive themes. For the artist, creativity is a way to shape “queer communities and spaces in which, no matter how bad things are outside them, we can still thrive within them.”
Text Clementine De Pressigny
This article originally appeared in i-D’s The Creativity Issue, no. 348, 2017.
Credits
Photography Tim Walker