Andro Semeiko: Open Studio

To mark the final week of his three-month residency at PEER, Andro Semeiko will hold an open studio in both gallery spaces to enable visitors to view the works in progress, and to have the opportunity to meet him and discuss some of the ideas that have developed during this project.

London-based and Georgian born Semeiko's primary activity is as a painter, but his interest lies in the complex construction of narrative installations that call upon the language of satire and the absurd through his work with writers and performers.

Semeiko has collaboratively employed the wordsmithing skills of writer and curator Sally O'Reilly and Russian novelist and broadcaster Zinovy Zinik, to concoct an array of references from which this project has evolved. Semeiko has identified intriguing kernels of historical information from the local area, which have sown seeds of free-associative and swashbuckling fancy. 

One starting point has been an episode in Hoxton's history when, in 1597 Ben Jonson purportedly killed fellow-actor Gabriel Spenser during a duel in a field on which now stands a council housing estate to the rear of PEER. Another rich seam that Semeiko has mined comes from his historical research into the life of Sir Thomas Tresham, a fanatical catholic who was held under house arrest at around the time of the fatal encounter between Jonson and Spenser on the spot where PEER now stands.

Discussions between Semeiko, O'Reilly and Zinik began with these two events, and then evolved and morphed into musings that span triangles, substantiation, rubbish chutes, drunkenness and scaffolding. Collapsing past, present and fictional Hoxton, O'Reilly and Zinik have produced texts that are being adapted by Felix Mortimer of Retz theatre company into short vignettes to be enacted by Bill Bingham at the beginning and end of the open studio week. This exercise in elaboration, excavation, embellishment and exegesis will be further explored throughout the week.

Throughout the week a number of FREE special events are being held including:

Monday 8th April at 7pm: Performance (approx. 15 mins)

Performance by Bill Bingham based on texts by artist, writer and curator Sally O'Reilly and novelist and broadcaster Zinovy Zinik and adapted by Felix Mortimer of Retz.

Thursday 11th April from 2 to 6pm: Drawing Workshop

Drop-in drawing workshop led by Andro Semeiko as part of Hoxton Free Art School, in partnership with Shoreditch Trust.

Sunday 14th April from 3pm: Performance and Talk

Another chance to see Monday evening's performance by Bill Bingham followed by a tea break and an in conversation between Andro Semeiko and writer and critic

JJ Charlesworth. Please join us for closing drinks to mark the end of Andro's residency at PEER. E-mail us at [email protected] to reserve a free place for the talk.