LONDON EXHIBITIONS
«A«Tri»Lick», PEER
20 July – 14 September 2013
Caroline Achaintre, Sarah Bowker-Jones and George Young have distinct and divergent approaches to material and process. For this exhibition, all three have produced new work and have been engaged in the selection and installation as well as the titling of the show. This collective engagement has revealed a number of common interests, particularly a shared inquisitiveness about image and object making through the languages of sculpture and painting.
In Jumpy Recline Sarah Bowker-Jones has reconfigured remnants of existing works alongside newly made elements to create a site-responsive work for one of PEER’s window spaces. Like the method of bolting together Meccano plates, the jesmonite panels she constructs can be reconfigured and assembled as an adaptable system for the site of exhibition. Forms that break down or structures that collapse, dissolve or degrade are never intended as finished, polished sculptures but are constantly in flux ready to be reinvented.
Anthropomorphic forms recur throughout Caroline Achaintre’s work with ceramic sculptures that bear crude facial expressions or grimaces and begin from an interest in the surface of manufactured materials or textiles that are imprinted into the clay. Prophet and its companion Peres demonstrate Achaintre’s interest in the ambiguity of materials, where combinations of the fixed clay and malleable leather or textiles co-exist. A new tufted wool work has been created for this exhibition; a mechanical and fast process, which, results in large-scale wall hangings that hold a shamanistic authority over the space they occupy. Without prescribed beginnings, their means of production share more with action painting than with the language and precision of tapestry.
George Young describes the manner with which he uses materials as ‘wrong-footings’ or ‘impersonations’ that superficially seem to have other physical properties. His sculptural work at PEER cross references one element of a stolen Barbara Hepworth sculpture, Two Forms (Divided Circle) (1960), that creates a deception of surface and weight through its reincarnation in polystyrene. Cultural frames of reference also appear in his paintings, spanning British Modernism to Paparazzi photographs. Made on paper and often shown alongside sculptural stretcher-like frames, they are installed as part of an interrogation or deconstruction of the materials of painting.
Rachel Reupke, Wine & Spirits, Cell Project Space
13 September – 27 October 2013
Displaying film alongside her new series of digital prints titled Nonic, drawings of rounds of drinks done in Photoshop, Rachel Reupke‘s art remains art with a weather eye on the commercial, as well as art that does not take for granted where the usually accepted boundaries between the categories of art and commerce lie. Reupke already drew on qualities of stock photography in her film 10 Seconds or Greater from 2010, and in Wine & Spirits, she has more fun with constructing her locations and drawing out her shots so that they can be ‘open’ for interpretative meaning – and sellable, commodified.
Threaded through this though, are a series of unforgiving observations on relations between some men and some women. Plus the persistent presence of alcohol, not only in the film, but also lingering malignly in the drawings. In a world where romantic love retains its image as an elusive, unique and splendid thing that sparks between individuals, then profile-matching algorithms can be developed for use in finding that love via dating websites. Two apparently contradictory ideas can co-exist perfectly well, the instinct imagined in one, constructed through the equations developed by the other. This is the world that Reupke depicts in all its soaring, grim detail, with her shots of make-up flaked pores and tipping pints. And it is here, perhaps most particularly in the pursed lips and expectant, but ultimately hopelessly constrained demeanour of the woman protagonist, that the film can begin most effectively to identify the nature of the tedium isolating its characters.
Oscar Murillo, If I was to draw a line, this journey started approximately 400km north of the equator, South London Gallery
20 September – 1 December 2013
For his first major solo exhibition in the UK, London-based artist Oscar Murillo empties his studio to present its contents in the main gallery space. Stitched canvases, drawings, sculptures and films, tables constructed from copper sheets, used as flooring in previous shows, and floor pieces made from masses of pulped biro drawings continue Murillo’s practice of translating various aspects of studio endeavour into matter and then into form. Mobilising the physical remnants of distinct social situations, he exposes some of the contradictions and complexities apparent across socioeconomic, racial and cultural boundaries. For this show, he incorporates an active component in the form of a lottery, the individually screen-printed, artist-signed tickets for which are on sale from 2 September and are displayed in the SLG’s first floor galleries. The first, second and third prizes are each devised by Oscar Murillo and are revealed at a prize draw on 18 October.
Andy Holden, MAXIMUM IRONY! MAXIMUM SINCERITY, 1999-2003, Zabludowicz Collection
26 September – 15 December 2013
The 2013 Annual Commission will consist of a major new show by Bedford based artist Andy Holden. The culmination of an 18-month collaboration with the Collection, it will include film, large-scale sculpture and performance to explore the output and legacy of the MI!MS (Maximum Irony! Maximum Sincerity) artistic movement, which Holden founded with friends before training as an artist in 2003. The movement’s manifesto stated “MI!MS is about the willingness to be lied to and the will to believe! It’s about the intense sadness of our unrealistic dreams, and the intense joy of our desire for them.”
This is Holden’s most ambitious project to date. The exhibition will include collaborations with the other founding MI!MS members: John Blamey, Roger Illingworth, James MacDowell and Johnny Parry.
REGIONAL EXHIBITIONS
Laura Buckley,The Magic Know-How, Site Gallery, Sheffield
10 August – 21 September 2013
Site Gallery presents a site-specific installation by London-based artist Laura Buckley. The Magic Know-How is a 3D sensory sound and light collage in which, as Buckley states, ‘cold technology retrieves a personal memory.’ Buckley’s artwork is generated through light and video projected through prism-like large scale semi-transparent structures. For this project, she has created a series of new videos, which will be projected onto the sculptural forms, filling the gallery to create an immersive experience. Buckley’s work with film uses moments from her own life which she edits as a series of memories, cut with snippets from popular culture and shown alongside more abstract colour field pieces.Her ongoing collaboration with musician Andy Spence of NYPC, will for this project, generate a sonic environment, which like the visual material, is made up of synthesized fragments from the artist’s everyday domestic life. The Magic Know-How marks a new development in Buckley’s work. With the use of bespoke methods of digital scanning and manipulation, the production of the image and sound is visible and editing actions have become part of the final work.
Roger Hiorns, Untitled, The Calder at Hepworth Wakefield, Wakefield
30 August – 3 November 2013
Internationally acclaimed and 2009 Turner Prize nominated British artist, Roger Hiorns exhibits his entire body of Youth works for the first time as the inaugural exhibition at The Calder. The Hepworth Wakefield’s new 600 square metre contemporary art space is located in the ground floor of a historic mill next to the main gallery site. Newly commissioned works by The Hepworth Wakefield that will develop further this longstanding motif in Hiorns’ work will also be on display.
Untitled series comprises found objects, which includes street benches, jet and car engines and stainless steel preparation tables – all ‘activated’ through the presence of a naked youth, a small fire and a simple sequence of actions. Visitors to The Calder will be able to observe these live activates at timed intervals throughout each day.
Hiorns will further explore the influence and meaning of the Untitled series with a aural intervention within the space that will create a connection between Wakefield Cathedral and The Calder. Visitors will experience a backdrop of everyday sounds such as coughs, footsteps, choir practice, organ music or religious service that will be transmitted live from the Cathedral into The Calder.
Cao Fei, Haze and Fog, Eastside Projects, Birmingham
21 September – 16 November 2013
Cao Fei‘s Haze and Fog is a new type of zombie movie set in modern China made by one of the most important Chinese artists working today. Working with film, photography, installation and performance Cao Fei probes her personal and cultural relationship to metropolitan China.
Rather than positioning activity as good vs evil, Cao Fei’s major new video commission explores how the collective consciousness of people living in the time of what the artist calls “magical metropolises” emerges from seemingly tedious, mundane, day-to-day life. This magic reality is created through a struggle at the tipping point between the visible and the invisible.
Zombies have long been an important metaphor in Western popular culture but not so in China. Often violently blank they allow for evil motives to be projected onto them. In the western zombie film the zombie’s brain is dead but the body is alive. In Haze and Fog the ‘walking dead’ are people with something dead inside only not their brain but their soul. The artist has departed from the like of U.S. TV show The Walking Dead, or the horror adventure game Silent Hill, and their protagonists’ search for equilibrium. Instead of strong violence and shock, or a tense
atmosphere through the unseen, Cao Fei’s Haze and Fog examines people up close, slowly and in detail. Zooming into the international modern cells of new immigrants moved from traditional housing areas, we see people whose daily rituals have changed and traditions lost.
Elizabeth Price, ‘SUNLIGHT’, Focal Point Gallery, Southend-on-Sea
30 September – 28 December 2013
This will be Focal Point Gallery’s inaugural project in its new building and Price’s first solo exhibition in a public gallery since winning the Turner Prize in 2012.
For this exhibition, Price will present a new large-scale video installation, which draws on historic slide imagery of the Sun.
