DEAN KELLAND
(2019 – 2023)
Birmingham-born artist Dean Kelland works across performance, photography and filmmaking. His practice touches on cultures of taste and histories of class in order to produce engaging observations on collective and mediated identities. Kelland has exhibited nationally and internationally with Ikon and undertaken residencies at New Art Gallery Walsall and Birmingham & Midland Institute.
Kelland holds a PhD from Central Saint Martins (entitled Flawed Masculinities: “Rupturing” 1950s/60s/70s British Sitcom via a Performance-led Interdisciplinary Arts Practice) and has taught Fine Art for over 25 years.
IMPOSTER SYNDROME
Dean Kelland’s exhibition at Ikon Gallery, Imposter Syndrome (20 September — 22 December 2023), featured a number of his new films, prints and sketchbooks that reimagine the psychoanalytic dialogue that has occurred between Pop Art and Prison Art since the 1960s.
Referencing figures from popular culture such as Elvis and David Bowie, Kelland interrogates male identity and flawed notions of masculinity.
DEAN KELLAND: IMPOSTER SYNDROME, EXHIBITION IMAGES
EDMUND CLARK
(2014-2018)
Edmund Clark is an artist with a longstanding interest in incarceration and its effects. His previous subjects include Guantanamo Bay, the CIA secret prison programme and the detention of terrorism suspects in England on control orders.
Clark is a Senior Lecturer on the MA Photojournalism and Documentary Photography course at London College of Communication and his work has been acquired for national and international collections, including the National Portrait Gallery, the Imperial War Museum and the National Media Museum.
IN PLACE OF HATE
Edmund Clark’s exhibition at Ikon Gallery, In Place of Hate (6 December 2017 — 11 March 2018), included photography, video and installation.
Clark’s work is shaped by his engagement with issues of censorship, security and control. He could not make images that reveal the identity of the prisoners or details of the security infrastructure and so his response was to create work that explores ideas of visibility, representation, trauma and self-image.