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BJORN VENO

“Our wisdom is slavish prejudice, our customs consist in control, constraint, compulsion. Civilised man is born and dies a slave. The infant is bound up in swaddling clothes, the corpse is nailed down in his coffin. All his life long man is imprisoned by our institutions.” Rousseau

The body of work Sirkel gave the artist an arena where he could break down such constraints through a form of performance, which takes inspiration from surrealist, automated writing. A method that allowed the artist’s subconscious to press through, and find expression through the body itself. In dialogue with this approach, the artist enforced high levels of control through planning, preparation and postproduction, in order to create juxtapositions between the two, and such contradictions permeate the work throughout. The most prominent, being the distinction between the artist’s ideas of his child self and his attempts at being a man in modern society.

“Being a free–lance explorer of spiritual dangers, the artist gains a certain license to behave differently from other people…” Susan Sontag

Born 1979, lives and works in the UK

EDUCATION

BA Philosophy, University of Oslo, 2002
BA Photography, Kent Institute of Art and Design, 2006

GROUP EXHIBITIONS

Three BY Three (3), Yinka Shonibare’s space (curated by JJ Charlesworth), London
Sirkel, Fotografiens Hus, Oslo, Norway
Romantic Ant-Humanism, Five Years, London
BEAUHEMIA, NETTIE HORN, July 2007
ECCE HOMO, The Brick Lane Gallery, February 2007
London Photographic Awards, 2006
AOP OPEN exhibition, AOP Gallery, 2006
'Art in Mind' at 'The Brick Lane Gallery', 2006
Graduation show at University College for the Creative Arts, Rochester, Kent, 2006
Pilsner Urquell IPA Best of Show Curated by renowned Photography Consultant, Debra Weiss, the exhibiton will travel around the world to photography festivals in Los Angeles and New York, Toronto, Canada, Rome, Italy Perpignan, France, Lodz, Poland and Prague, Czech-Republic, 2006 2005
London Photographic Awards Ad agency exhibition at Saatchi & Saatchi, London, 2005
"Paper cut cult presents Subverting Genesis at the Ship In", 2005

AWARDS

London Photographic Awards. Awarded Gold for my body of work 'Sirkel' in the category: Documentary: My Back Yard., 2006

International Photography Awards, Awarded 1st place for the photo series "Sirkel" in the category: People in non-professional, sub category: Self Portraits, 2006

International Photography Awards, Awarded 2nd place for the photo series "Where are we?" in the category: People in non-professional, sub category: Other, 2005

London Photographic Awards. Awarded 2nd place for the picture "Sparkel" in the category: L/scape - Landscape with Figures, 2005