Pioneering Russian artists Igor Makarevich (b.1943) and Elena Elagina (b.1951), partners both in art and in life, belong to the group of Moscow Conceptualists working alongside the internationally recognised artists Ilya Kabakov, Erik Bulatov and Oleg Vassiliev, that produced a new language for art in Russia when links with the West were still closed. Their performances with the Collective Actions' group during the 1970s and 1980s remain legendary. As Joseph Bakstein wrote about them: "Today we can certainly say that Makarevich and Elagina are acknowledged classics of modern Russian art, whose work reflects the upheavals of Russian history from the legendary 1970s onwards. It would be no exaggeration even to think that they were and still remain the soul' of the Moscow school of conceptualism, bearing and expressing the common sense' with which it is imbued. This is because only when you have that common sense' are you able to show the absurdity that exists in various aspects of man's symbolic existence, especially when we talk of Russian art history during its most dramatic periods". Makarevich and Elagina held their first exhibition in the UK at Club Row, Rochelle School in November 2008 - "The Mushrooms of Russian Avant-Garde". In the show they used the hallucinogenic magic mushroom as a metaphor for the irrationality that pervades modern culture in the same way as it pervaded ancient mystical practices. One of the central pieces of the show is a sculpture in which the iconic symbol of modernism, Vladimir Tatlin's tower, sprouts from the top of a fly-agaric mushroom, representing the visionary and utopian nature of the Russian avant-garde. The piece is now part of the Articulate collection. A series of photomontages of buildings in Moscow emphasised the fungal characteristics of much twentieth century architecture. Such humour suggests that hallucinatory visions are not the sole province of shamans, lunatics or dropouts - they are a facet of modern life. Though inspired by the Russian avant-garde masters Kasimir Malevich and Vladimir Tatlin, the theme of hallucination also relates to the politics of memory. When Elagina attended the academy she was taught by the avant-gardist Alisa Poret, student of the visionary painter Pavel Filonov - creator of psychedelic, fractured and hallucinatory images - and a pioneering performance artist in her own right. By then, however, Poret had been reduced to extolling the primacy of Socialist Realism. It was as if the whole avant-garde movement was just a hallucination', Elagina relates. Igor Makarevich and Yelena Elagina have been exhibited in museums worldwide including the Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow; the State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg; the Pompidou Centre, Paris; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Ludwig Museum, Cologne; the Akademie der Kunste, Berlin; and the Wilhelm-Hack Museum, Ludwingshafen.

Igor Makarevich and Elena Elagina
Photo collage, 90X70, 2003

Igor Makarevich and Elena Elagina
Photo collage, 90X70, 2003

I.Makarevich and E.Elagina
"Pagan (Tatlin's Mushroom)"
papier-mache, wood, enamel, 2008