Emilia Telese is an Italian-born crossover artist based in Brighton, UK.
Born in Sarno, Italy, in 1973. Her family has its roots in the towns of Angri and Tramonti, both in the Campania region of Italy, and the city of Foggia in Apulia.
After a BAhons degree in Painting from the Academy of Fine Arts of Florence in 1996, moved to the UK in 1997.
Alongside her practice as an artist, she also works as Artists' Networks Coordinator for a-n The Artist Information Company and as a freelance art writer and trainer in artists' survival skills.
She has been involved as project manager and assistant director in several UK art organisations in the UK and stage and costume designer for a number of theatres in London.
Selected work in collaboration with Tim Mark Didymus is also collected at www.shingtactical.com
Statement
Curiosity for transformation is the driving force in my work. My concern is with art as ever-changing communication - a dynamic language varying with its message.I have been interested in non-verbal communication in society and art since the start of my practice in 1996. I believe that good art should not provide answers, but instigate questions and change lives through continuing conversations with society"
Sound bites:
My work focuses on the way the mind and body are affected and transformed by external elements and impulses, and the inter-relation between intimate consciousness and public perception.
"I never liked the term "multimedia artist", because I found it too simplistic and almost reductive. You can of course imply that multi-media means multiple media, where a medium is anything from a pencil to a processor. But that term ended up defining people who make cd-rom art, or digital art, or net art, as the main aspect of their practice. My work often engages with electronic media, in the form of interactive technology, film, audio and net-based art, but I also use low-tech media like performance, visual arts, design, and more. I use different media according to the most suitable ones needed to create particular projects. I decided to use the term "cross-over artist" because I work across artforms. I could say I am like a swiss knife artist, an artist who crosses over different means of expression to find the most appropriate one according to need and inclination."
Selected recent work
- 2008 Viaggi - Journeys, exhibition curated by Emilia Telese and Rebecca Marshall for the Shot By The Sea Film Festival, organised by Electric Palace Cinema Hastings www.electricpalace.com.
- 2008 Ongoing Radio Sofia, the voice of the Italian disapora, every other Tuesday 3pm GMT on Radio Reverb 97.2 from Brighton UK, or on live webstreaming on www.radioreverb.com.
- 2008 The Ring of Fire, installation at Blank StudiosGallery, Brighton, at The Brighton Festival.
- 2007 Performance for Future Time and Tide, a debate exploring ideas about cultures of the future. social anthropologist and writer Ted Polhemus. Organised by Electric Palace Cinema during the Shot by The Sea Film Festival, Hastings. Costume by Daniela Corcio.
- 2007 Life of a Star, solo exhibition at Contemporary Visual Arts Centre Vestjylland, En Tangsogade 4 Udstilling, Denmark.
- 2007 The Rice Pavilion, public art and humanitarian aid installation as The Edible Construction Company, with Guyan Porter and Chris Biddlecombe, in collaboration with Edoardo Malagigi, Jubilee Library, Brighton. Supported by The National Lottery through Arts Council England, South East, Brighton & Hove City Council. Partners: Feed The Children UK, Curtiriso, Aerotrope, Brighton & Hove Library, Moshi Moshi, Fabrica, The Royal Pavilion.
- 2006/7 Emilia Paranoica, live art and video installation at the Paranoia Touring show - Perfect Ten, Leeds City Art Gallery – Leeds, Removed And Destroyed, Focal Point Gallery, Southend on Sea, The Enemy, Freud Museum, London, curated by Predrag Pajdic. www.aionarap.org
- 2006 Can We Break the Speed of Light? Video and digital art exhibition throughout Hastings, guest curated by Emilia Telese in collaboration with the Shot By The Sea/Off The Wall Hastings Film Festival. [nl
- 2006 Rogo, performance installation with Guyan Porter and Perfect 10 video installation and performance at Freeshout Festival, Prato, Italy. www.freeshout.it
- 2006 Life Circle, environmental installation, at Arti Nel Bosco, Pordenone, Italy. www.artinelbosco.org
- 2006 Curfew, performance and installation, at City Running, Phoenix Gallery, Brighton Festival
- 2005 Sleepwalking, video installation, at Prg:Me, Centro Cultural Telemar, Rio de Janeiro
- 2005 Self portrait with Victorian mirror and Superman”, photography, at Completely Naked, Campbell Works gallery, London
- 2005 Life of a Star and Sleepwalking , performance and video installation at The New Forest Pavilion, Palazzo Zenobio, at The 51st Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy
- 2004The Big Art Challenge, live performance at art based reality TV programme, FIVE
- 2004 Sleepwalking at [re]:collection - documenting memory and remembering - Chashama Gallery, 217 East 42nd Street, New York, NY http://www.csd.net/~seawall/show.html
- 2004 The Trojan House, limited edition prints, open house at Brighton Festival 2004.
- 2003 Multiples, limited edition prints, at Permanent Gallery, Brighton.
- 2003 Sleepwalking, video installation at Christopher Gull, Brighton, and exhibition BAG gallery, Brighton, for Brighton Photofringe at Brighton Photobiennial http://www.photofringe.org http://www.emiliatelese.com/sleepwalking.html
- 2003 Dark Symphony. A 250,000-watt acoustic ambience in the Donaupark, at Ars Electronica 2003, Linz, Austria. Generative tonal algorithms provide the soundscape in the park on the banks of the Danube, with software assuming the role of the composer.
- 2003 Gesture III, interactive performance at Labculture Symposium, Bridport, Dorset.
- 2003 and 2002 Sleepwalking, a video and performance one-month residency at Artsway, New Forest, in September 2002; a solo exhibition at Artsway Spring 2003.
- December 2002 Gesture II, an interactive video and performance installation, at the Tenax club, Florence, Italy
- 2002Parallel Lives, a photography installation recording the lives of different people around the world at a determined time of day, in collaboration with Russian artist Igor Baskin, shown at the Ekaterinburg Museum Of Modern Art, Siberia late 2002.
- 2002 Gesture, an interactive multimedia performance residency bursary for PVA Medialab (http://www.pva.org.uk ), exploring non-verbal communication and cultural merges in a visual, sound and evocative environment. Gesture maps out environmental and personal space, taking into account the everyday movements that people are engaged into while in conversation.
- 2002 “Freeshout”, an independent Festival of New Contemporary Art in Prato, Italy, in July 2002 (http://www.freeshout.org ) where she presented the “Stage Land” video installation (see below)
- 2002 “Stage Land” in collaboration with Tim Mark Didymus, for “Devolve into II”, live web-stream video and sound installation at the “Intermedium II” Festival, ZKM (Zentrum fur Kunst Und Medientechnologie) Media Centre, Germany.(http://devolve.aaeol.ca/online/index.html)
- 2001 “Transmit II” interactive performance with Liquidstatic, for the CYNET2001 Festival for Computer Aided Art, Dresden Germany (www.body-bytes.de, www.liquidstatic.org) funded by The British Council
- 2000 Rename Real Name”, sound installation with Tim Mark Didymus for the Generative Art 2000 Conference in Milan, Italy (www.shingtactical.com, www.generativeart.com)
- 2000 "Transmit", interactive biofeedback installation performance, for the III Festival of Experimental Art & Performance, Manege Institute Of Contemporary Art, St Petersburg Russia
- 2000 "TM", generative sound piece with Tim Mark Didymus for the 2000 Werkleitz Biennale of Electronic Arts, Werkleitz, Germany (www.werkleitz.de , www.kulturserver.de/home/TM)
- 2000 "Le Quattro Stagioni", multimedia arts residency in Canterbury, UK, funded by Year Of the Artist Awards (www.magneticsouth.org.uk)
- 2000 "10x5", Multimedia installation-performance, Hastings, funded by South East Arts, Millennium Festival Awards and Hastings Borough Council
- 1999 "Mecha-Voices", on line on-site sound installation with Tim Mark Didymus for "Sound Drifting", at Ars Electronica 99 Festival of Electronic Arts, Linz, Austria(http://thing.at/orfkunstradio/SD)
- 1999 "Out of the Blue" performance, Queen's Park, part of the Brighton Festival, Brighton UK
- 1998 "Life of a Star" performance, Live Art Weekend Fabrica Art Gallery, Brighton UK
- 1996 "Sadomasokitsch", installation/performance, various locations, Centro Storico, Florence Italy
- 1995 "Kaben", "Ecologica 95", International Ecology Expo, design and performance, Fortezza da Basso, Florence Italy