Zoë Walker & Neil Bromwich can be described as both artists and explorers – using their work as a means to navigate an unfrequented and treacherous territory – the slippery space between the real world and an idealised version of this world. Within this liminal space the duo create objects and situations that lead them and us on transformative experiences, inviting us towards an ‘other’ way of being.

Zoë Walker & Neil Bromwich use seductive tactile materials to create objects that play with a complex visual language which borrows as much from art history as it does from the aesthetics of protest marches, cartoon strips and dance culture. Their work is often responsive to a particular geographical site drawing on a location’s unique atmosphere, history and culture, to create work that resonates against an international landscape as much as it does in the place from which it was born.

The work treads a fine line between naive optimism and political activism challenging the audience to engage with their surroundings through a child like sense of wonder, coaxing us to ask ‘why do things have to be this way?‘, ‘why can’t the world be better?’ and imploring us to believe we can try to make things more than better.

The idealistic nature of the work is underwritten by a very humane sense of failure tangible in the fabric of the work itself. Mountains made from air and nylon are used as a means of combating border restrictions, a fake helium-filled cloud attached to a harness becomes a way to enter the stratosphere, a boat masquerading as a disco ball bobbing on the oceans sets out to make audible the invisible. In each of these works there is an impracticality, a folly of action that has a romantic and heroic appeal. We are made aware that the work can only fall short of the ambitious intentions it has. But it is clear that it is the act of trying that is important. Trying to achieve an ideal through romantic means, this becomes the point at which all possibilities are opened and transformation can take place.

It is within this intention that the work operates and releases it’s healing power and it is within this emotive paradox that we can join Walker and Bromwich’s campaign.

Artists’ Biographies

Zoë Walker and Neil Bromwich have worked together since 1997.

Currently, their most major project to date, Panacea, together with artist Michael Pinsky, has travelled from Centre de Création Contemporaine, Tours, France, Parvis Centre d’Art Contemporain, France, John Hansard Gallery, Southampton, Cornerhouse, Manchester and Milton Keynes Gallery. This project has been funded by a National Touring Grant from the Arts Council England, and has also been awarded a Wellcome trust Sciart Production Award.

Other projects include My Island Home for the V&A; Urban Nomads at South London Gallery; Fusion for St Johns Hospital Livingston and Fruitmarket Gallery Edinburgh; Celestial Radio for COAST with Commissions East; Love Cannon Les Ateliers des Arques, France, Love Cannon Performance at Camden Arts Centre, and in association with the Great Unsigned and Whitechapel Gallery; Site-Seeing; A Disneyfication of Cities at the Künstlerhaus, Vienna; and Somewhere Special at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne.

In 2001 they were commissioned by TV Swansong a cross-media arts project resulting in In Search of a Small Planet a live webcast, screened at the ICA, CCA, the Baltic, Tate Liverpool, Dundee Contemporary Arts, Delfina Trust, Hull Time Based Media and the Ikon.

Artists commissions and residencies include The Scottish Arts Council, Australia Residency, Canberra; 200 Gertrude Street, Melbourne; The Pier Art Centre Fellowship, Orkney; The Berwick Gymnasium Fellowship and Grizedale Arts.

The Panacea catalogue and a monograph on Zoë Walker & Neil Bromwich are to be published by John Hansard Gallery and will be distributed by Cornerhouse Publications from Oct 2007.

Their work has been featured in; Freeze, Arts Review, Contemporary, Flash Art, Art Monthly, MAP, AN Magazine, Time Out, Untitled, Archistorm, C’est la vie, Sleaze Nation, Big Issue, Metro, Evening Standard, The Scotsman, Scotland On Sunday and The Guardian.

Zoë Walker & Neil Bromwich are represented by Houldsworth Gallery, London. contact www.houldsworth.co.uk for all sales enquires.