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| Uncommon
Chemistry ________________ 20.03 - 17.04.2016 Observer Bld, Hastings |
Uncommon
Chemistry installation
view
(l-r:) Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard
Jumpers (what must I do to be saved) (2013);
Hannah Lees
A past and a Future IV (2015); Jacqui
Hallum The Sun
(2016); The Grantchester Pottery
This will is not religion; this is love #1
(2016); Gino Saccone
Steep Hill (for Tango) (2016)
| BLISS
(Simon Bayliss & _____ Lucy Stein) Lydia Brockless Adam Chodzko Esther Collins Julia Crabtree & _____William Evans Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard |
The
Grantchester Pottery
Jacqui Hallum Sophie von Hellermann Clyde Hopkins Dan Howard-Birt Nicholas Johnson Henry Krokatsis Harry Lawson |
Hannah
Lees Fiona MacDonald Tim Meacham Simon Periton Gino Saccone Toby Tatum Susan Taylor Pauline Wood |
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Uncommon Chemistry is an exhibition interested in the parallel artistic leitmotifs of material agency and arcane spirituality, and how the conscious engagement with one or other of these territories provides valuable analogies for the broader understanding of art-making and art-viewing. Namely that there is always something which lurks beyond the artist’s control, which brings a work to life and enables it to mutate and evolve through different contexts of time and place.
Intensions are fine; honed skills are a rich resource; practiced methodologies are a scaffold, but there are always some unexpected or uncontrollable factors which influence works as they are made in the studio, or as they are viewed in a gallery.
Contingency is that breath of life that allows artists’ works to be free of the tyranny of ideas and authorial predetermination. Contingency is the influence of the world beyond the artist’s control on the shaping of an artwork’s form or significance. Contingency is the muscular tightness, or anxiety that prevents a painter’s stoke from elegantly describing a perfect contour. Contingency is the impact of a damp studio on the patina of a sculptural surface. Contingency is the unscripted dialogue or attitude in an actor’s performance. Contingency is the changing light conditions on a pigmented surface in an exhibition space. Contingency is the way breaking news or personal experience refocuses an artwork’s casual allusion, bringing unexpected issues centre stage. Contingency is the acknowledgement that all art making is in some way a dialogue, and that meaning can only temporarily coalesce somewhere between the maker and the object or document. And, that likewise, meaning is fugitive for the viewer as they engage with a film or a painting within a temporary exhibition.
Material agency and the realm of the spiritual are contingencies. A given material’s inbuilt behaviour such as the crystalline flowering of chemical sulphates or the globular puckering of melted plastics can be harnessed by an artist within their process, but only so far. Spirituality proposes an even stranger furnace for a work to be forged. Archly irrational, the conjuring of ley lines, dope hallucinations and religious rituals all securely place an art object on the edge of what might plausibly and logically be comprehended. Material agency and spirituality meet in alchemy, but each retain their own distinct power to affect, inform and undermine.
The progressive and utopian drives of the 20th and early 21st centuries are periodically interrupted by unexpected dalliances with the blatantly irrational, often at moments of extreme cultural anxiety such as global conflict, the wholesale failure of political ideologies, the explosion of networks for personal influence or the digital atomising of individual identity. It is no surprise then that some artists today are bending to the potency of these irrational contingent factors within their studios.
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| (l-r): Jacqui Hallum, Aclimatisation (2016); Hannah Lees, A past and a Future IV (2015); Jacqui Hallum The Sun (2016); The Grantchester Pottery This will is not religion; this is love #1 (2016); Gino Saccone Steep Hill (for Tango) (2016); Sophie von Hellermann, Going up in Smoke (2016) |
(l-r): Simon Periton, The Lookout (2014); Adam Chodzko, White Magic Kent, UK and Brooklyn, NY (from 'Design for a Carnival') (2006); BLISS, Ding Dong / The Wind's Vagina (2016); Nicholas Johnson, 'The bush around said nothing...' (2015) |
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| Henry Krokatsis, Levitation I (2006) | Esther Collins, Matched Pair: Light (The Blend) (2016) | ||
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(l-r): Gino Saccone, Steep Hill (for Tango) (2016); Sophie von Hellermann, Going up in Smoke (2016) |
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| Pauline Wood, (detail of) At the Round Earth's Imagined Corners (2016) | (l-r): Harry Lawson, Still Lives (2016); Sophie von Hellermann, Going up in Smoke (2016) | The Grantchester Pottery, This will is not religion; this is love #2 (2016) |
Gino Saccone Steep Hill (for Tango) (2016); Jacqui Hallum, Aclimatisation (2016); Fiona McDonald, Rite (2014-15); Hannah Lees, A past and a Future IV (2015)
(l-r):
Fiona McDonald,
Rubbing in a Wood (with
Norway Maple) (2016); Clyde
Hopkins, Hepworth
and BB King (2015); Fiona
McDonald, Rubbing in
a Wood (with Beech)
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| Fiona McDonald, Rite (2014-15) | (l-r): Lydia Brockless, One, Many (2014); Susan Taylor, The Outline of Things as They Are (2015); Lydia Brockless, Lipsticulum (2014) |
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(l-r): Toby Tatum, Metal Space (2014); Pauline Wood, (detail of) At the Round Earth's Imagined Corners (2016); Simon Periton, Celestial Agriculture (2014); Hannah Lees, And in the nowhere I & II (2016); Henry Krokatsis, Levitation I (2006); BLISS, Ding Dong / The Wind's Vagina (2016); The Grantchester Pottery, This will is not reigion; this is love #2 (2016) |
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| (l-r): Pauline Wood, (detail of) At the Round Earth's Imagined Corners (2016); Simon Periton, Celestial Agriculture (2014); Henry Krokatsis, Levitation I (2006); BLISS, Ding Dong / The Wind's Vagina (2016); Esther Collins, Matched Pair: Light (My Chains Fell Off) (2016); Hannah Lees, And in the nowhere I & II (2016); The Grantchester Pottery, This will is not reigion; this is love #2 (2016); Fiona McDonald, Rubbing in a Wood (with Norway Maple) (2015); Lydia Brockless, Lipsticulum (2014); Clyde Hopkins, Hepworth and BB King (2015); Jacqui Hallum, Nervous System (2016) |
(l-r): Simon Periton, The Lookout (2014); Adam Chodzko, White Magic Kent, UK and Brooklyn, NY (from 'Design for a Carnival') (2006); BLISS, Ding Dong / The Wind's Vagina (2016); Hannah Lees, And in the nowhere I & II (2016); Nicholas Johnson, 'The bush around said nothing...' (2015); Jacqui Hallum, Nervous System (2016); Pauline Wood, (detail of) At the Round Earth's Imagined Corners (2016); Lydia Brockless, One, Many (2014); Esther Collins, Matched Pair: Light (The Blend) (2016); Lydia Brockless, Lipsticulum (2014); Susan Taylor, The Outline of Things as They Are (2015) |
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| (l-r): Susan Taylor, The Outline of Things as They Are (2015); Lydia Brockless, One, Many (2014); Lydia Brockless, Lipsticulum (2014); Gino Saccone Steep Hill (for Tango) (2016); Jacqui Hallum, Nervous System (2016); Hannah Lees, A past and a Future IV (2015); Dan Howard-Birt, Stone Circle with Lightning Strike (Janus) (2016) |
(l-r): BLISS, Ding Dong / The Wind's Vagina (2016); Tim Meacham, Vapour (2016); Fiona McDonald, Rubbing in a Wood (with Norway Maple) (2016); Fiona McDonald, Rubbing in a Wood (with Beech) (2015) |
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| (l-r): Clyde Hopkins, Hepworth and BB King (2015); Julia Crabtree & William Evans, Things (2016) |
(l-r): Jacqui Hallum, Aclimatisation (2016); Fiona McDonald, Rite (2014-15); Hannah Lees, A past and a Future IV (2015) |
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| (l-r): Jacqui Hallum, Nervous System (2016); Lydia Brockless, One, Many (2014); Hannah Lees, And in the nowhere I & II (2016); Susan Taylor, The Outline of Things as They Are (2015); Lydia Brockless, Lipsticulum (2014); Pauline Wood, (detail of) At the Round Earth's Imagined Corners (2016); |
(l-r): Tim Meacham, Vapour (2016); Simon Periton, Celestial Agriculture (2014); Henry Krokatsis, Levitation I (2006); BLISS, Ding Dong / The Wind's Vagina (2016); Esther Collins, Matched Pair: Light (My Chains Fell Off) (2016); Fiona McDonald, Rubbing in a Wood (with Norway Maple) (2015) |
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| Hannah Lees, (detail of) And in the nowhere I & II (2016) | (l-r): Esther Collins, Matched Pair: Light (My Chains Fell Off) (2016); BLISS, Ding Dong / The Wind's Vagina (2016); Pauline Wood, (detail of) At the Round Earth's Imagined Corners (2016); Fiona McDonald, Rubbing in a Wood (with Norway Maple) (2016); Fiona McDonald, Rubbing in a Wood (with Beech) (2015); The Grantchester Pottery, This will is not reigion; this is love #2 (2016); Nicholas Johnson, 'The bush around said nothing...' (2015); Jacqui Hallum, Nervous System (2016); Esther Collins, Matched Pair: Light (The Blend) (2016); Pauline Wood, (detail of) At the Round Earth's Imagined Corners (2016); Lydia Brockless, One, Many (2014); Lydia Brockless, Lipsticulum (2014); Susan Taylor, The Outline of Things as They Are (2015) |
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| (l-r): Pauline Wood, (detail of) At the Round Earth's Imagined Corners (2016); Jacqui Hallum, Nervous System (2016); Jacqui Hallum, Aclimatisation (2016); Hannah Lees, A past and a Future IV (2015) Dan Howard-Birt, Stone Circle with Lightning Strike (Janus) (2016); Harry Lawson, Untitled (2016); Tim Meacham, Vapour (2016); Simon Periton, Celestial Agriculture (2014); Henry Krokatsis, Levitation I (2006); BLISS, Ding Dong / The Wind's Vagina (2016) |
Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard Jumpers (what must I do to be saved) (2013) |
some thoughts about the curatorial approach... |
In
putting the show together the works' materiality became fundamentally
important. The texture of the jacquard tapestries, or the vegetable
dye stained beanbag, or the crystal-blooming cement each change
the way that the sculpture or painting is looked at. You can't get
away from the haptic sense of surface, and by implication an understanding
of the artists' processes in making the work, and that part of the
making which was began by the artist, but continued by the chemistry
of her materials themselves. This type of looking is completely
different from other types of looking - such as spectacle, which
is passive, or reading, which turns objects into signs. All of these
types of looking are going on in the mind and body of the viewer
at the same time, but an insistence on the behaviour of materials
is both a slower kind of looking and a more intimate kind. Slowness
is important as it allows for all the other types of looking to
come to the fore and then to retire (sometimes over and over). And
so, even looking fails to be static and fixed. Meaning begins to
coalesce between types of looking, and it is affected as you peripherally
glimpse another artist's work, or the fabric and history of the
room, of the building. Works like this are like clusters of energy.
They have porous boundaries. The are infectious and permeable. Dan Howard-Birt, 2016 |