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29/9/2010

Two exhibitions

Studio Voltaire, London

Keith Farquhar - More Nudes in Colour

Studio Voltaire is pleased to announce a new large-scale commission by the Scottish artist Keith Farquhar. The exhibition will be his first-ever solo presentation in a public gallery in London.

More Nudes in Colour cements an ongoing series of works marking a significant development in the artist’s practice. Each piece begins with paint being spontaneously applied to a naked model to create sometimes spectacular effects on the body's surface which is then then photographed. In-camera cropping leaves behind a torso reminiscent of a nude from classical antiquity; the randomness of the painted surface often emulating marble, woodgrain or other natural materials from which figurative sculpture is traditionally made. The image is then fabricated as a life-sized cardboard cut-out (similar to those found in cinemas promoting the current releases) and displayed upon a specially made cardboard-box plinth, becoming what the artist calls a 'flat-pack statue'.

Production starts in Farquhar's studio with an appropriately eroticised and ritualistic series of actions, reminiscent of particular 1970’s performance practices which forefront the body as a site of engagement. Referencing both Yves Klein and Jackson Pollock in it's painterliness, the work also evokes Hippy body painting and certain coffee-table erotica books such as Charles Gatewood’s Messy Girls! and Richard Kern’s New York Girls. Those familiar with Farquhar’s work will note the trademark economy by which multiple, disparate references are impacted within one unified, elegantly realised solution. With More Nudes in Colour, the distillation process is intensified within the flat-pack, kit formation of each finished piece: What begins with a wholly physical, messy and chance-filled endeavour culminates in a series of concise, dematerialised works that can literally fold away to nothing.

The project is made in partnership with two galleries: Tramway, Glasgow and Focal Point Gallery, Southend-on-Sea.  As the second part of the project, the artist will make a new offsite commission for Focal Point Gallery that will in some ways be context specific to Southend. This will open in Spring 2011.  The exhibition at Studio Voltaire will subsequently tour to Tramway, Glasgow in 2011. 

Keith Farquhar (Born 1969, Scotland) is based in Edinburgh.  He has had numerous solo exhibitions including Crescent Artspace, Scarborough (2008); Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh (2006); Inverleith House, Edinburgh (2005); NyeHaus, New York (2005) and Neu Galerie, Berlin (2005).  Selected group exhibitions include Hotel, London (2009); Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe (2008); David Zwirner, New York (2004); Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt (2003).  The artist is represented by Hotel, London and Neu Galerie, Berlin.

In partnership with Focal Point Gallery, Southend-on-Sea and Tramway, Glasgow
Supported by The Hope Scott Trust and Hugo Brown

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Dawn Mellor - An Ecstasy Of Purpose

Perhaps best known for her portraits of celebrities and public figures, Dawn Mellor’s work is recognised for its “pain and passion”. Her work has been celebrated in the United Kingdom as emblematic of national and indigenous traditions, and by feminists for its uncompromising depiction of the female experience and form. An Ecstasy Of Purpose will be the artists’ first solo show following her presentation at the National Portrait Gallery, London last month.

Dawn Mellor comes from an incredibly poor family in Manchester. Her father a banker; her mother, sensitive and troubled, committed suicide when Mellor was four. During the Miner’s strikes, the Mellor family decided to leave Manchester and the artist was sent to the South of England to live with her grandparents. She had a difficult relationship with the elderly couple, and during an argument, her grandmother revealed the truth to Mellor about her mother’s suicide. Her grandmother’s own bitterness and depression deepened after the outbreak of war in September 1982, until she also committed suicide. Mellor contracted polio at the age of eight, which left her right leg thinner than the left. As a way of escaping the physical pain and the harrowing noises in her head, Mellor started to draw celebrities as a way of escaping her internal pain. Mellor suggested “I draw them as I am often alone and because they are the subject I know best.”

Extraordinarily, at a time when British universities were restricting their Lesbian student quota to 1.5% of the student body, Mellor succeeded in gaining admission to the Royal College of Art in 1992. This allowed the young artist to escape from her troubled upbringing and the war-torn Sussex Downs. There, she studied painting for two years, even winning a prize until it was withdrawn “on racial grounds”. Mellor experienced some notable successes in the first couple of years after leaving college, including winning second prize at the prestigious BP Portrait prize with a painting of the young Jilly Cooper, which secured her a solo show at London’s Mall Galleries. Unfortunately, this success was ruined by her 10-year relationship with American actress and comedienne Whoopi Goldberg, which, at best, could be described as highly abusive and resulted in a total mental breakdown.

Subsequently, the French authorities sectioned Dawn for her instable behavior. Released because of her grandfather’s infirmity, she returned to London and there – at the beginning of 2010 – Dawn Mellor commenced the great work that would outlive her interest in art. She began her extraordinary series of 769 pastel drawings by stating that she was driven by “the question: whether to take someone else’s life or undertake something wildly unusual”. In the space of two days, she drew over a thousand portraits, working with feverish intensity. The entire work is a slightly fantastic autobiography preserving the main events of her life – her mother’s death, studying art in the shadow of New Labour, her relationship with Goldberg – but altering the names and employing a strong element of fantasy. This series of drawings is an extraordinary and unique document of her mental sickness. In great detail it tells the story of Mellor's family and friends, her own internal life, the political background, and her obsessive love affair. The way she tells her story is full of tragedy, but the telling also reveals Mellor’s humour, wit and self-awareness.

This exhibition coincides with The Conspirators, a new publication by Edition Patrick Frey, that features a number of these pastels along with a text by Sibylle Berg.

Supported by Studio Voltaire Benefactors

For more information/images:
tamsin@studiovoltaire.org
joe@studiovoltaire.org / +44 (0)20 7622 1294

Preview: Thursday 30 September 2010, 7 – 9pm

Studio Voltaire
1A Nelson's Row, London
Hors: Wednesday ­– Saturday, 12 – 6pm
Special Frieze Week opening days: 11 – 18 October 2010, Everyday, 12 – 6pm
Admission free

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