Last Days in the Garden
dal 8/1/2003 al 2/2/2003
Segnalato da
8/1/2003
Last Days in the Garden
Ashley Gardens, London
Last Days in the Garden, an occasion to contemplate absurd, sexual and beautiful objects, as the passing of time is marked, minute by minute, hour by hour, with the slow pulse of colour and sound.
Curated by Daniel Lehan
Last Days in the Garden, an occasion to contemplate absurd, sexual and beautiful objects, as the passing of time is marked, minute by minute, hour by hour, with the slow pulse of colour and sound.
Gardens
where the processes of life: nurture, growth, decline and rebirth unfold year in, year out.
Gardens
wild, barren or cultivated places, places for reflection, places of great beauty, of play, frivolity and secrets.
Gardens x{2026}x{2026}x{2026}.
often created and loved by artists
To coincide with Last Days in the Garden, a publication of dialogues between the artists participating in this show will be available from the gallery.
___________
ARTISTS
Mark Brogan
For Mark Brogan, it is crucial that the process of making his sculpture is conceptually accounted for, that the making includes exact thought and attention as to how to produce the work's structure and surfaces, before he proceeds to physically make the piece.
There seems to be a debauched/puritanical dichotomy between the surfaces that constitute each piece of work. Sensual, flaccid/erect, fat rolls of gloss paint penetrate or adorn, are tied or squeezed, or are knotted around or through, clean, hard, sparse, sometimes sprayed structures, whether this be a door, a box, or a highly polished length of wood.
This is especially so with x{2018}Gloss Castration', included in this exhibition, where the downright dirty, swiss-rolled, black gloss paint, passing through the orifice of a pristine, spray-painted, rectangular box, emerges drooping either side of the hole.
D'Este Hanson
D'Este Hanson makes timepieces that mark the passing of each minute and each hour with colour and sound. A mechanical system is adapted to create work full of countless and unpredictable possibilities where x{201C}chancex{201D} operates within prescribed limits.
Each minute and each hour colours change, but from which colour to which colour, remains a guessing game. Grouped together on one wall the pieces present a staggering (no doubt incalculable) number of possible colour combinations.
The sound made by the colours changing serves to remind the viewer that time passes.
Seeing these in Hanson's studio, the small constantly flashing red light on the front of each piece, reminded me of the pulse of lighthouses I viewed as a child from Margate harbour, navigating vessels through the night.
Daniel Lehan
Poured circles of paint (decreasing in size towards the centre) sit one upon another, stacked like pancakes of paint on a giant round plate. In the making of the work, any allusion to food (as above) was not an intention, although, in the past, Lehan has
made work using foodstuffs such as chocolate and hundreds and thousands, normally used for cake decoration. Pouring circles of paint, not as easy as it may sound, the expanding paint spreading faster in one direction subverts the system and intention.
Seen from a distance these circular works appear to be flat, the coloured disks working visually, either sharply or gently with its neighbour. Viewed closer, the physical reality of the work comes in to play and the piece intrudes gently from the wall.
Nik Ramage
Nik Ramage covets a certain type of object, well worn and evoking the clutter of sheds and tool shops, objects hauled from skips or spied in junk yards and second hand shops, the value of the find: metal letter stencils, a set of lovingly crafted wooden wheels, underplayed to the seller x{201C}Call it a fiver for the lot?''
These objects then presented either simply with another from a collection stored in the studio or used to construct some complicated, sometimes noisy machine that has logic, certainly in terms of its construction, and yet performs an absurd task.
Like Unplugger, the size and stature of a bulldog, pulling against the electrical lead that powers it, finally wrenching itself away from the plug in the wall, with just enough momentum to splutter a few feet forward.
Daniel Lehan
Open Wednesday - Sunday 11.00am - 5.00pm
Ashley Gardens
Pleasure Unit, Rushmead, E2 London