Scroll down for CV
Temo Southard is an artist exploring the practice of automatic writing. His labyrinthine, melding layers of writing adhere to Andre Breton’s surrealist dictum to write quickly, without any preconceived subject, so as to avoid remembering or rereading. Southard’s surrender of agency takes this principle further, extending it to the ineligibility and impenetrability of the textual terrain. Uninterrupted, the sheer velocity of automatic, overset text - bordering on hypergraphia - evokes a sense of all-surrounding, simultaneous presence across often monochromatic vistas. Typewritten or handwritten, blotted and marked by real and metaphorical indelible imprints of the artist’s hand, these multidirectional tableaus are rife with paradoxes. Latent meaning is obscured as quickly as it is created, with the artist and viewer both equally confronted by and locked out from its contents. The subconscious eludes direct observation and analysis, meanwhile its textural and rhythmic iterations are made physically manifest. Though emerging patterns are created through a repetitive process, in actuality the same thing can never be rewritten and an awareness of this is embraced in every work. Southard’s method of free association, coupled with the designo of the hand, renders the writer and their body its own medium and text.
At the core of the artist’s engagement with automatism is a belief that it can be harnessed artistically for its potent restorative and imaginative possibilities. Southard’s work contributes to and is in dialogue with contemporary concerns regarding autonomy and creativity in the context of artificial intelligence. Influenced by both early twentieth century European surrealist thought and the regimented, controlled abstraction of South Korean Post-War movement Dansaekhwa, Southard’s work is a continual striving for a clearing of the mind, a oneness with the medium and a preservation of the interior through external gesture.
Written by Anna Moss, current curator of Liliya Art Gallery, UK.
Education
2020 UAL Foundation diploma, specialised in Drawing, London, UK
2021-2022 BA Drawing, Camberwell, UAL, London, UK
2022-2024 Diploma, Painting and Printmaking, HGB (Prof. Michael Riedel/Franziska Reinbothe), Leipzig, Germany
2024-2025 BA Fine Art, City & Guilds London Art School, UK
Selected Exhibitions
2021 The London Season x Honeypot (Charity Auction), Exhibitor, Mayfair, UK
2022 YIELD (Group), Curator/Press/Exhibitor, AMP Gallery, Deptford, UK
2022 Just passing through… (Group), Curator/Exhibitor, HGB Leipzig, DE
2023 Guten Zeiten Schlechte Klasse, (Group), Performer/Exhibitor/Bar Manager, HGB Winter Rundgang, Leipzig, DE
2023 Corpus Delicti, (Group), Hypha Studios, Press/Exhibitor, London, UK
2024 Sonderausstellung: Preistragende des Rundgangpreises, (Group) Curator/Exhibitor/Bar Manager, HGB Rundgang, Leipzig, DE
2024 Loss and Discovery (Group), Hypha Studios x INSISTRUM, Exhibitor/Co-Curator/Bar Manager, Reading, UK
b. 2000, London
Currently lives and works in London, UK