GIFT HORSE LIBERATION FRONT

NEW OFFICIAL HQ

2011-10-15T16:58:00.000-07:00

New website is up www.ashleighrauen.com

2011-01-05T18:00:00.000-08:00

photo credit Judson Felder - click to see the whole photo

Ode to Mare (Minna)

2010-12-29T00:44:00.000-08:00

Ode to Mare (Minna) from Ashleigh Rauen on Vimeo.

2010-12-16T21:49:00.000-08:00

2010-11-07T20:23:00.000-08:00

digital video stills click to enlarge

2010-10-23T14:40:00.000-07:00

2010-09-24T17:12:00.000-07:00

2010-09-12T03:55:00.000-07:00

digital film still, drawing detail, digital video excerpt.
Association of Icelandic Visual Artists SiM Residency in September: http://sim.is/Index/English/SIM/

mmx from Ashleigh Rauen on Vimeo.

The White Breast of the Dim Sea

2009-07-28T13:34:00.001-07:00

A multimedia installation by Ashleigh Rauen presented by the Anne Bonny.

For one month a slideshow of drawings exists inside a hand-embroidered canvas tent, exploring our infatuation with the sea, and our need for protection from it and from each other.

Opening reception Sunday 2 August 6 pm at the Anne Bonny, Summit & Mercer on Capitol Hill (in the old No Space gallery)

don't fear the reaper

2009-01-12T14:41:00.001-08:00

some stupid old drawings of sharon tate and a self portrait graphic I did from Free Sheep's Moore Inside Out Project

2008-09-18T23:19:00.000-07:00

Final Crisis Opening

2008-09-07T00:46:00.000-07:00

Here's a little video of Tom and I's opening at the Vermillion Gallery last wednesday brought to you by the Dead Science.

Press Release for FINAL CRISIS

2008-07-25T00:29:00.000-07:00

Here's what Sam drafted for us:

"The Dead Science proudly present:
FINAL CRISIS
A mixed-media show by Ashleigh Rauen & Tom Chapel, the Visual Arts Department of the Villainaires Academy

Sept. 1-7 at Vermillion Gallery (1508 11th Ave, www.vermillionseattle.com)

Artists’ reception-Wednesday, Sept. 3rd 8pm-closing (Night 3 of The Dead Science’s “Villainaire Festival of Culture”)

Long-time friends but first time collaborators Ashleigh Rauen and Tom Chapel present FINAL CRISIS; an art show exclusively in Black, White, & Gold Leaf, which will employ a variety of mediums and techniques to cover the walls of Vermillion in large, mural-style pieces, which will then be isolated and composed into smaller pieces via framing and oblique strategies. FINAL CRISIS finds this dynamic duo, both long-time accomplices of The Dead Science, The Villainaire’s Academy, and Implied Violence, extending and extolling their own ideas about villainy, its uncertainties, and its rewards. Thematically outcropping from both The Dead Science’s forthcoming record Villainaire (which Rauen designed) and the performance works of The Villainaires Academy, (including 2006’s Greasy Demon Heat Balboa, which featured Chapel) FINAL CRISIS gives us a look at the the day evil won.

The reception for Final Crisis will be the third evening of The Dead Science’s Villainaire Festival of Culture, a week-long program of multi-media events surrounding the North American release of Villainaire on Sept. 2nd. These events exist to more fully present and express our community of artists, as well as to provide further supplementary thematic material to that which appears on the record.

Ashleigh Rauen is a fine artist and graphic designer living in Seattle. With a vested interest in both forgotten and experimental printmaking techniques, she has formed Gift Horse Graphics, an enterprise that has, amongst other things, covered Seattle in some of the most beautiful posters the city has ever seen, including several for Implied Violence and The Villainaire’s Academy. Some examples of this work can be found here- myspace.com/gifthorsegraphics
She has also recently dove more fully into shows of her own fine art, employing her wide-ranging printmaking and drawing techniques to create small pieces of exquisite refinement, heart-dusting nostalgia, and subtle polemics.
Reno, NV native Tom Chapel has, since his relocation to Seattle a few years ago, been a frequent fixture in the works of I.V. and the V.A., as well as a prolific graffiti artist. His solo shows, “Welcome Back Kronos” and "The Illest Motherfuckin Art Show on the Planet (Featuring Kronos)," found Chapel producing a staggering amount of small paintings and sculptures, the latter obsessed with the cartoon iconography of titan Kronos, the latter an explosion of flag-waving, cop-killing grandeur. In August he will show “Hostage Crisis” at the victory lounge, a gun-toting further tunneling into patriotic flagellism."

2008-07-23T23:08:00.000-07:00

screenprint fold-out zine thing

2008-07-23T22:54:00.000-07:00

2008-07-23T22:22:00.000-07:00

2008 serigraph

The Belmont

2008-07-23T22:07:00.001-07:00

room installation, serigraphy, wheat paste, contractor's mud, paint.

This deal went down November 07. Here's what the Stranger wrote:
The Belmont
posted by Brendan Kiley on November 29 at 13:01 PM

The Belmont is a small old apartment building on Capitol Hill, redolent of a squat. Across the street is Press, a tall shiny condominium building, already redolent of the future. The two have been in a kind of staring match since 2002: the Belmont all squinty and weathered, the kind of building you would like to feed some soup; Press all unflinching, obnoxious pride.

As of November 30, the condos will have officially won. The low-rent residents of the Belmont, many of them artists, will be evicted to make way for a new condo development, as will the rest of the residents of the 500 block of Pine Street (a center of gravity for Seattle music, culture, and sleaze). But not before they have their final say. On the night of the eviction, the Belmont will become The Belmont, with murals on every wall (outside and inside), installations in every apartment, and a performance by Implied Violence on the roof.

Last Sunday night, the inside of the Belmont already looked like a Barcelona squat, with paintings and photo collages covering the walls and ceilings. Some were by local graffiti heroes like Specs (two green faces at the top of a flight of stairs), some by cartoonist Ellen Forney (hers wasn’t done yet), and dozens of others.

The unofficial leader of the Belmont, named Nko (“knee-ko”) was cooking squash and potato soup in one of the apartments while other people painted on the walls, drank beer, and smoked. Someone, somewhere was playing an accordion.

“We’re dressing up this corpse for a second,” Nko said, leaning on a crutch. (He shattered his heel in a biking accident a few months ago.) “Then this space will be demolished. Our memories will be unanchored from architectural space.” Nko said The Belmont will feel more like a funeral than a party; all the music will be dour.

From the press release for The Belmont:

“We look at Press every day and cannot remember what saw there before; this is our fate.”
Nobody will be able to get into The Belmont without tickets, which can be procured on the day of the event at a downtown crepe stand. (See Theater Calendar for details.) Nko said The Belmont is trying to avoid some of the overcrowding that happened at Motel #1.

The artists only gave hints about what, exactly, they’ll be doing. Implied Violence’s rooftop performance involves local Balkan brass band Orkestar Zirkonium and samples from Triumph of the Will and The Chronic.

Nko said one of the apartments will have “some serious nature shit.” His installation involves sentences from Derrida’s The Truth in Painting and an old oil-painting manual that belonged to his dead grandmother. “The combination is sort of interesting,” he says, holding a hot bowl of soup. “The nostalgic and formal along with the deconstructionist. But nobody’ll notice. They’ll just be drunk and walking through.”