NORMALISATION OF DEVIANCE
RICHARD DEDOMENICI
Pump House Gallery, London
19 April - 28 May 2007
Private View: 18th April, 6:00pm
A term used in industrial psychology - specifically in reference to NASA shuttle disasters - Normalisation of Deviance describes the gradual shift in what is regarded as acceptable after repeated exposures to aberrant behaviour.
Artist and self-styled 'one-man subversive think-tank' Richard DeDomenici ascribes this phenomenon to the fact that after six years of instinctively making work that sidesteps the gallery system, He has been offered, and has accepted, a solo London gallery show.
The ground floor of Pump House Gallery will screen a rolling video retrospective of DeDomenici's street interventions, while the first floor will comprise recent 3-D work. Floor two will host a resource area for his current BetterBanner project ≠ to design a lightweight, durable and ultra-portable protest banner fit for the 21st Century.
Pump House Gallery
Battersea Park, London
SW11 4NJ
Tel: 020 7350 0523
The gallery is closed Monday and Tuesday.
Open Wednesday, Thursday, Sunday and Bank Holidays from 11am - 5pm and Friday and Saturday 11am - 4pm.
Normalisation of Deviance is part of The Art of Protest.
Power of Art Nov 06
A series of short films premiering on YouTube in association with the new landmark BBC Two series Simon Schama's Power of Art.
New! Part Three
Part Two
Part One
Teaser
Black Cylinder Gallery: Unofficial Launch 21 September 06
Richard recently held the unofficial launch of the gallery housed within his wristwatch during a special event at the Repatriating the Ark exhibition at the Museum of Garden History. Click here for more.
Did Priya Pathak Ever Get Her Wallet Back? August 06
You can now book tickets online for my forthcoming show at the Edinburgh Festival!
It's about the complicated relationship between my work and the police.
Described as "Sometimes Slapdash" by the Russell Herron Blog, I promise to tidy it up before it gets to The Pleasance Dome.
Hi-Res Promotional Image and Production Stills #1 and #2.
Fame Asylum 16 June 06
I am now the proud manager of a newly-formed vocal harmony boyband comprised of asylum seekers and refugees.
From left to right: David (17, Nigeria); Aaron (22, Albania); Long (17, Vietnam); Saeed (17, Iran).
They are doing their very first (and possibly very last) performances of their first song 'A Guy Like Me' this Sunday at 3:50 and 5:05pm at the Celebrating Sanctuary festival on London's South Bank.
The band is designed to alter attitudes towards immigration issues among the difficult to-reach opinion-influencing female adolescent demographic, harnessing pester-power and the trickle-up theory to change minds, alter behaviour, shift paradigms, and transform societies.
If you are a record company executive and/or a screaming girl, please come.
Read articles about the band in today's Guardian and last Sunday's Observer.
More info on the Fame Asylum project here. Hi-res still here.
Interview 16 June 06
I spoke to Professor Jennie Klein at the National Review of Live Art in February. Here is the transcript.
Forthcoming 'Did Priya Pathak Ever Get Her Wallet Back?' Lectures
Glasgow National Review of Live Art 08 February 06
Cardiff Howard Gardens School of Art 15 February 06
London The Bishopsgate Foundation 16 March 06
London BAC 04/05 May 06
Ipswich John Mills Theatre 09 June 06
Bristol Arnolfini 28 June 06
New York July
Washington DC July
Reykjavik July
Edinburgh Pleasance Dome August 06-28 (not 15)
Forthcoming 'Embracing Failure' Lectures
London Camberwell School of Art 27 February 06
London South Bank University 25 April 06
Watford Camera Club 6 March 07
The Richard Dedomenici Blog 1 March 06
It's quite good, but I find it difficult to dedicate the time to updating it. Thus I'm developing a less labor-intensive, more intuitive way to upload my thoughts onto the Internet. But don't expect it anytime soon - the technology doesn't yet exist.
Click Here.
New Book 1 February 06
According to the printer, it's one of the most interesting things he's manufactured in a long time.
Available from the Dedomenici Shop now!
Recognition In The Absence Of Information 23 January 06
Click Here for to magnify image. Click Here for the answer.
EscalatorChair 23 January 06
Exhibited as part of Failure To Do So Is An Offence at Galerie der Hochschule f¸r bildende K¸nste Hamburg 23.01.06 - 02.02.06
Click Here for footage of EscalatorChair in action.
Photo: Mark Wayman
Oh Little Robin 25 December 05
View Richard's Christmas Message Here.
An Englishman in Toronto 23 December 05
Miss Courtney Scott (left) and Richard Dedomenici (right) proving that there is such a thing as a free lunch.
To watch three minutes of video collected on my Pentax Optio S5n compact digital camera
during my trip to the Creative Places and Spaces2 Conference in Canada in October, click
Here.
Politioke 23 December 05
View 20 seconds of footage Here.
Watching Fireworks Through a Pair of 'Dreab Shower' Glasses 23 December 05
View 12 seconds of footage Here.
But what are 'Dreab Shower' Glasses?
Crazy Golf 25 November 2005
De La Warr Pavillion, Bexhill-On-Sea
Given the plan to replace the Bexhill-On-Sea crazy golf course - located adjacent to the De La Warr Pavilion - with a new Boutique Hotel , I thought it prudent to amalgamate the crazy golf course into the Pavilion itself, thereby ensuring that the town s cultural heritage is preserved.
View Footage of Crazy Golf Here
Read a review of Crazy Golf by the esteemed Miniature Golfer publication Here
You Wait For One Piece In Time Out London To Do With Buses
Read The Other Article in Time Out London in Full Here
Political Top Trumps 26 October 2005
Richard Dedomenici presents an innovative solution to the problem of declining
rates of participation in voting amongst young people.
By reworking the classic playground card game of luck and skill, and
distributing inexpensive and portable packs of Political Top Trumps throughout
British schools, Dedomenici hopes to politically educate the young, many of
whom will be eligible to vote at the next general election in 2009.
Richard hopes that the social benefits of the project will persuade Hasbro,
owner of the Top Trumps brand, not to take legal action.
You Could Have Played Political Top Trumps Here
Pedestrian Congestion Charging 09 August 2005
The Royal Mile, Edinburgh, Scotland
View Footage of Pedestrian Congestion Charging Here
Unattended Baggage 11 May 2005
Helsinki Railway Station
What happens when a seemingly unattended bag is actually being attended, but the person who is attending it is doing so from inside the bag?
Find out Here
With thanks to My Dads Strip Club
Mobile Mobile 03 April 2005
A kinetic mobile made out of mobile telephone handsets.
Installed in a building that bears an uncanny resemblence to The Guggenheim, New York.
But isn't.
Click here to see footage.
What I did in Colchester 01 March 2005
The above Lampost/Cable Tie liaison is located in the south-west
corner of the Homebase, Tollgate East carpark.
It was made as part of Ben and Holly's Spend and Make.
The Big Flyposter Draw 15th October 2004
The major music companies save over eight million pounds annually by advertising on illegal flyposting sites.
Graffitiing something that has itself been illegally stuck to the wall theoretically isn’t illegal.
Traditionally, graffiti has been the preserve of nocturnal adolescents.
I advocate flyposter graffiti as an exciting new legal pastime for the whole community, which will both unleash the creative potential of the population, as well as discouraging the use of flyposters by major corporations.
I say ‘theoretically’ because I haven’t conclusively checked.
Risk is an important aspect of my artistic practice.
But it may not be of yours.
So please don’t take part if you feel uncomfortable about the possibility of unintentionally breaking the law, and all that implies.
And don’t take part if you’re worried about getting paint on your clothes.
Oh, and don’t get any paint on the wall or pavement - because that would be vandalism.
Made for The Laboratory of insurrectionary Imagination
Liverpool Biennial 21st October 2004
The day after Boris Johnson's stage-managed visit to Liverpool I dressed up as the aforementioned tory buffoon and wandered the city saying sorry to all those Liverpudlians that didn't get to meet him in person.
Some accepted my apology, others threatened to break my legs.
What Richard did in America April 2004
World Trade Jenga
Richard Dedomenici's sculpture 'WTJ' is a scale model of the World Trade Centre assembled from 198 wooden Jenga blocks, individually hand coloured with a marker pen.
Cable Tie
Dedomenici's solo attempt to navigate Chicago with a plastic bag on his head and his hands tethered behind his back with a nylon cable tie - the US military’s brutally efficient method of choice for detaining illegal combatants.
Cable-Tie video: Dial-up or Broadband
Grid Reference
A guided tour of the Scottish city of Glasgow, albeit on the streets of Chicago, achieved by overlaying maps of both cities‚ grid-pattern street layouts.
Quit Your Flapping (Part 2)
In this yet-to-be-edited film, Richard Dedomenici attempts to disprove Chaos Theory (popular example thereof: a butterfly flaps its wings in New York and causes a tidal wave in Tokyo) by dressing up as a butterfly, flapping his wings in New York, and then phoning the Japanese coastguard to see if any tidal waves have actually struck.
Richard went to America with My Dad's Strip Club and The Vacuum Cleaner. Collectively they made work at the Version04 festival.
Gulf Sale 19 Nov 2003
Today, in a cunning attempt to bypass police cordons around Buckingham Palace and Downing Street, I carried a seemingly innocuous 'GOLF SALE' placard around Central London:
Once past police barricades, and at a moment's notice, the slogan can be transformed into the more incendiary 'GULF SALE'
(a reference to the lucrative post-war reconstruction contracts, funded by revenue from Iraqi oil reserves, that have been handed to US corporations with close links to the Bush administration.)
From benign-sign to asinine-sign in a flick of the wrist:
One of the banner's innovations is that it can be easily dismantled to enable convenient public transportation:
Unfortunately, the tubular arrangement of the banner's collapsible pole caused suspicion amongst security services at Buckingham Palace, who thought I may be about to launch a crude pipebomb attack at the Royal residence.
I realised that any attempt to erect my sign may result in being shot in the head by one of the four police marksmen on the roof of the Palace.
I had therefore discovered a flaw in my hypothesis.
Scared, I walked into St James' Park and decided to erect my banner in the presence of a policeman on a bike.
He was impressed, and said I should patent the design
The banner cost about five pounds to build, and is the first prototype in my research project to design an lightweight, ultra-portable, protest banner for the 21st Century.
Photography: Luci Briginshaw
