The artist collective North-7 started in 2013 as an independent 'research base'. It is an artist-run space, founded by several friends and schoolmate in a basement in the centre of Saint Petersburg. These past seven years, the group has migrated across the city, changing its locations and initiating different long-term artistic projects, which have involved participants from the local community. As a collective, North-7 does not have strict borders. It remains open to collaborations and cannot be defined. As such North-7 can be considered a research base / art group / collective / partnership / family of artists.

Performances play a crucial part in the artistic practice of North-7. However, they also experiment with different art forms in varying media. The artists examine themes such as identity and politics, without conforming to existing rules or intellectual trends.

North-7 also works with a concept of 'locality', not as immersion into local mythology, but as an estrangement from the 'local state of mind' with its provinciality and generality, while using fears and obsessive images, introversion and inner potential to redefine itself. As a form North-7's practices are rooted in absurdist poetry with images that grow from an 'architecture of words', self-destructing structures of 'floundering signs'. The artists often rely on buffoonery as a concept in their performances and other art forms, much like a 'bad joke' which reflects a situation where social 'reality' (or rather social phantasm) beats any irony, any imagined witticism.

Lost & Found North-7 Expedition is a non-existent museum in the form of a classical ruin, such as a temple or a theatre. The installation was created for M HKA and holds documentation on and an archive of all past artistic projects and activities carried out by North-7. The installation takes the form of an archaeological dig and resembles an outdated provincial museum, which presents an eclectic range of artefacts in a non-linear, often symbolic manner.

North-7 is currently made up of Alexandr Tsikarishvili, Nestor Engelke, Petr Dyakov, Leonid Tskhe, Anna Andrzhievskaia, Nestor Kharchenko, Oleg Khmelev, Liza Tsikarishvili, Sasha Zubritskaya and friends.

The Saint Petersburg art group North-7 presents The School of Active Drawing and Performative Posing (SADPP-7). The concept of "the school" is only used for convenience as the project is focused on the critical analysis of this term and the revelation of the causes of its miraculous vitality in the conditions of Saint Petersburg art environment. As an art research project SADDP-7 began a few years ago with performative practices of North-7 aimed at the deconstruction of academic teaching system. As part of the project, non-classical manners of drawing and relations between "posing model" and "artist" began to develop.

Some of the project's participants have an academia background and, paradoxically, teach at the Russian Academy of Arts. However, they are not satisfied with the out-of-date model of classical drawing, its complete lack of freedom and of ways for development. The artists raise the following questions: what for? (to draw), why? (does one have to draw or does one have to draw in a certain way?) and how? (is it possible to draw and not to draw). The School of Active Drawing and Performative Posing is not an institution or a curriculum but a method of creating specific conditions-situations through which one can exit the utilitarian schooling rules. As a result, a vast diversity of techniques has developed: axe-drawing, poker drawing, soil drawing, drawing with human bodies, mechanical drawing (by creating special machines for that purpose), etc. Moreover, the specific topics-situations for the performative productions have emerged: living sculpture, model in an environment, mimicry of a model in the urban environment. Even though the term school is treated with criticism the project's participants regard themselves intrinsically connected to the heritage of the Leningrad school of graphic arts and in their work they are analysing their "rootedness" in the local art context.

The School of Active Drawing and Performative Posing unites the majority of Saint Petersburg artists who practice various methods of "immediate drawing" that include the analysis of its place in contemporary art. Summarizing the results found by SADPP, this exhibition presents works by its main participants: Anna Andrzhievskaya, Piotr Diakov, Nestor Engelke, Nestor Kharchenko, Fiodor Khirosige, Petr Shvetsov Leonid Tskhe, Alexander Tsikarishvili, Sasha Zubritskaya and others. Alexander Tsikarishvili has also acted as a curator.

The exhibition will show the audience different ways of overcoming the limits planar drawing. The exposition has been turned into an environment for performative installations, a living sculpture, costumes referring to the process of transition from a model into a performer, documentations of The School's performances and a samizdat magazine.