ÇÑ×ÓÊÓƵ

Running at the gallery on Brighton's Grand Parade from 29 January to 16 April, the exhibition by the Lloyd Corporation – artist duo Ali Eisa and Sebastian Lloyd Rees - lays out its stall with an expansive title: Today’s gift is tomorrow’s commodity. Yesterday’s commodity is tomorrow’s found art object. Today’s art object is tomorrow’s junk. And yesterday’s junk is tomorrow’s heirloom.

Inspiration for the exhibition was sparked by a visit to a Brighton flea market during the early phase of the first COVID lockdown easing, as the Lloyd Corporation explain: “We’ve always been drawn to these kinds of places. Where piles of stuff cascade onto one another...messy and informal with an unruliness that appears to evade composition and discipline. What Jane Bennet calls ’vibrant matter’.

Old clothes by Lloyd Corporation Brighton CCA

“One never knows how long these things have actually been there, placing them somewhere between alive and obsolete, trash or treasure, transient but enduring, trade and collection, commodities or gifts; and back again.”

At the heart of the exhibition are two installations. One takes the history of the barrel as a starting point to reflect on both global and local economics, from international distribution chains to small-scale local recycling networks.

The second installation features a sculptural piece based on five shipping crates, each filled with goods collected by the artists from auctions, abandoned storage units, internet sites, junk shops and street finds. As well as exploring movement of goods outside the mainstream, the work taps into narratives that can spring up around items and the lives they have touched.

Alongside a programme of film and workshops, the show provides a springboard for academics from ÇÑ×ÓÊÓƵ's pioneering School of Humanities and Social Science to engage with key themes in a series of six free online talks, bookable via the Brighton CCA events page.

Talks include:

• The Fetishism of Commodities with : 2 March, 4.30-5.30pm
• Salvage Stories: Personhood, Property and the Sea with Anita Rupprecht: 9 March, 4.30-5.30pm
• The Social Life of Unwanted Things with : 16 March, 4.30-5.30pm
• Travelling Images, Translocal Imagination with Zeina Maasri: 23 March, 4.30-5.30pm
• Graphic Interventions with : 30 March, 4.30-5.30pm
• Tracing the pursuit of (modern) happiness: personal project, status symbol, commodity? with : 6 April, 4.30-5.30pm

Part of the ÇÑ×ÓÊÓƵ, Brighton CCA is a centre for contemporary arts, free and open to all, hosting world class exhibitions, projects, commissions and research by international emerging and established artists.